Legal Conservatism’s Moment of Truth: Abortion Returns to the Supreme Court, by Josh Hammer

By Josh Hammer, Patriot Post, May 21, 2021

If the movement cannot overturn Roe or even make a severe dent in Casey, the verdict will be in.

In agreeing to hear the Mississippi abortion case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this week placed directly in its crosshairs the court’s two foundational modern abortion precedents, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In preparing to decide whether all restrictions on pre-“viability” abortions are unconstitutional, as the court’s order for a writ of certiorari indicates it will do, the court is teeing itself up for a potentially landmark — or potentially grievously disappointing — ruling next term. In girding itself to rule in Dobbs, and by extension ruling on the life-or-death fortunes of countless unborn children on this bedrock civilizational justice issue, a nominally conservative court is set to also decide the life-or-death fate of the legal conservative movement itself.

In order to uphold Mississippi’s law, a fairly straightforward 15-week abortion ban — a regulative time frame viewed as “strict” by abortion’s tendentious apologists but positively generous by European standards — with customary dispensations for severe fetal abnormality and the life of the mother, the court’s right-leaning justices will need to summon their innermost convictions and channel the solemnity of their constitutional oaths against what will be an unprecedented, full-spectrum intimidation campaign and disinformation onslaught. In the 13 months from now until the court’s anticipated ruling in June 2022, the sprawling edifice Andrew Breitbart called the “Democrat-media complex” will go into overdrive like it never has before, hoping to cow Justice Brett Kavanaugh and other perceived “gettable” center-right justices into submissive genuflection before their would-be ruling class overlords. …

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