5 Republican Justices Who Said Choosing Motherhood Is NOT Governed By Catholic Bishops

RedTracker| “It is an utter mystery to me” how religious groups that oppose abortion could read the same bill so differently, said Sister Simone Campbell, the executive director of Network, a Catholic social justice lobbying organization that supports the bill.” via NYTimes

And so we have a battle between nuns and bishops as America’s health care bill debate goes into its final hours. The nuns are opposed to abortion but read the bill very differently than the bishops, represented by Rep. Stupak, who insist that the health care for Americans go down in defeat without further restrictions on abortion.

Anne of Carversville supports a woman’s right to choose motherhood and also the right to privacy given her in Roe vs. Wade.

Revisiting the decision in detail, after reading David Brooks 2005 column stating that women’s rights should have been left in the hands of individual states, we were surprised to understand that five Republican justice and two Democrats wrote the decision.

Roe vs Wade wasn’t a split court decision made by Democrats. It was 7-2, with only two Democrats on the court. We argue that if the highly influential David Brooks is correct, even a woman’s right to contraception is a states rights matter based on the arguments that won Roe vs Wade in favor of women’s rights.

We were also surprised to learn that abortion was practised when the Constitution was written. Responding to the David Brooks argument that no right to abortion was guaranteed in the Constitution, we laughed before crying. Women had no rights when the Constitution was written, not even the right to vote.

As always men like the bishops are ideological, willing to bring down a health care bill until they get their way, while women nuns on the front line of life support a wider definition of ‘life’ than controlling women’s fertility. Read on Five Republican Men Who Gave American Women the Right to Choose Motherhood.