Rev. Barry W. Lynn: July 2009 Archives

Not surprisingly, we have such a different view about fetuses and their alleged "rights" that we haven't resolved the issue of coverage of "reproductive health" and abortion in the healthcare bill. You would grant constitutional rights to what the Religious Right calls the "preborn."

Let me ask what your view is on the "already born."  News accounts this morning chronicle the beginnings of a second-degree homicide trial for a father who allegedly allowed his young daughter to die from juvenile diabetes.  (The mother has already been convicted.)  His defense, in part, is that he didn't know his daughter had a serious illness and that he was praying for her recovery, whatever she had.  Do you believe that his presumably authentic and deep-rooted spiritual belief in divine intervention in curing illness should be a legal defense in a criminal trial?

Jay, any sensible health care reform plan is going to have to cover women's reproductive health care more completely and equitably than the current system.

We need to listen to those in the medical field as to what is the best health care package for every American, women obviously included, and follow that advice.

As of today, it seems medical experts believe abortion procedures should be included in a basic health care package. Nearly 90 percent of insurers currently cover abortion, according to a 2002 survey by the Guttmacher Institute. What you're proposing, Jay, seems to suggest that women give up a benefit they are already receiving under their private insurance policies. Again, this new health care policy is supposed to make health care more accessible, not less.

When all is said and done, Jay, I'm not sure either one of us learned what we wanted to from the hearings. Many issues were discussed ad nauseum; others virtually untouched.  (The Washington Post did any excellent analysis of this in its print edition on Sunday).  I was impressed by Judge Sotomayor's demeanor, even when she was being asked endless variations of questions she had pretty much disposed of in her brief initial statement.  When you and I give speeches or have debates at colleges or on television, we use a kind of language which is more direct, more ideological, and more "human" than what we might write in a judicial opinion in the unlikely event that either one of us ever becomes a judge on anything but a reality show.  This difference is not one of substance, but of style-- which is all that remarks like "a wise Latina woman" ever were.

There were obvious "set up" questions by Democratic Senators--or at least questions which they must have known Judge Sotomayor's White House advisers had prepped her to answer.  There were also obvious efforts by Republican Senators to trip her up using carefully prepared queries from ideological staffers and, I'll bet, some outside interest groups as well.  This is pretty much what Supreme Court hearings have become.  It does not change much whether the candidate is a choice of a President Bush or a President Obama.

Let me try to figure out your position on what Judge Sonia Sotomayor has said about a couple of issues. I have a few questions.

First, you noted in your last post that she said that Roe v. Wade was "settled law."  Is this a bad thing? I thought conservatives were supposed to like the doctrine of stare decisis, the idea that absent extraordinarily compelling reasons, the Supreme Court does not overturn the basic reasoning of earlier cases -- that precedent matters. 

As you know, Roe didn't resolve all the questions regarding access to abortion or there would not have been a half dozen major subsequent cases on reproductive choice at the Supreme Court since that decision.  If the judge had said "Roe is ripe for reopening," would you have said, "she had no respect for precedent and believes in judicial activism"?  Or with your strong anti-abortion beliefs, would you have said, "I applaud her willingness to re-open matters which were resolved in a way I didn't like in the first place"?

Jay, of course senators on the Judiciary Committee should ask thoughtful questions about what we often refer to as "judicial philosophy" during the hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor.  There is only one problem: some members of the committee have already made it clear they are planning ideological bloviations which will take up valuable time that ought to be spent on serious questions.

Politico has noted that some Republicans have come out swinging harder than expected.  This didn't surprise me at all.  Virtually everything Senators Jeff Sessions and John Cornyn have done since Sotomayor was nominated was gripe over her "smart Latina" comment (which has absolutely no bearing on her qualifications for anything).  This has allowed space for Senator Orrin Hatch to crank up the "left wing groups" mantra to show some "conspiracy" behind the hearings, the latest stunt, of course, invoking claimed efforts to destroy anti-Sotomayor witness Frank Ricci (that is, to point out that Ricci had a previous record of claiming discrimination before the claim that lead to the recent Supreme Court decision about his later claim of discrimination).

Jay, I like the principles of freedom in the Declaration of Independence (and the Constitution) as much as the next guy (that would be you.)  But when I hear conservatives like Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, and a host...