In a virtually unprecedented event in the history of the Supreme Court, a draft opinion of a major and controversial case was leaked and reported at Politico. This amounts to something akin to treason inside the sealed world of the United States Supreme Court.
The issue at stake is abortion. That's what makes the issue so urgently important.
Last night, as most of the nation was settling in for the evening, Politico dropped a bomb in the shape of a leaked story. The story included not only material that came from a majority opinion, supposedly written by Justice Samuel Alito. The actual draft itself was appended to the Politico story.
There have been various speculations and micro leaks coming from the Supreme Court, a few times in the past, even with wildly anticipated decisions coming. That was true in 1973 in the infamous Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. But there was nothing then akin to the actual document being leaked. Nothing like this has happened in the history of the Supreme Court in the modern era.
According to the leaked draft, a majority of justices believed that Roe (Roe V. Wade) and Casey should be overturned on the basis that abortion is not found in or supported by the U.S. Constitution. An excerpt from Justice Alito’s draft opinion is worth reading:
“Until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right was entirely unknown in American law. Indeed, when the fourteenth amendment was adopted, three quarters of the States made abortion a crime at all stages of pregnancy” (p. 5).
Here is the Supreme Court draft, obtained from CNN, and Politico.
Commentary
The issue of abortion is a sacred topic to liberals in general and the democrat party in particular. To quote Mary Elizabeth Williams in her 2013 Salon article “A fetus is indeed a life. It is a life worth sacrificing.”
Last night and today, pro abortion activists have demonstrated in front of the Supreme Court and city halls around the country, including Chicago, Omaha, Los Angeles and Portland.
Pro abortion individuals are fervently and violently disposed to protect legal abortion. They have threatened to do great harm to the United States if Roe V. Wade is overturned. This leads to the likely conclusion that whoever leaked the draft opinion to the public did so in hopes that the resulting aftermath would change the opinion(s) of some of the Justices on the issue.
In the past, some of the individuals who opposed abortion went too far, bombing abortion clinics, as if violence was a good way to stop violence. We don’t support that.
The Adventist Church has had a dismal record of protecting the sanctity of life in certain of its medical institutions. To our credit, we revised our church’s abortion guidelines in 2019, voted and passed at the 2019 Annual Council. These new guidelines were a positive step towards protecting the sanctity of life, although they could have—and should have—gone even farther. But they were a definite improvement over the previous awful abortion guidelines.
Here is a timeline of the SDA stance on abortion.
Certain Adventists, who tend to view other Christians as untrustworthy potential accomplices to the image to the beast, are already heralding a potential ruling by the Supreme Court against legal abortion as a bad thing. By default, they make the killing of children by abortion a ‘good thing’, proof that we have religious liberty and free will. This is an extreme view of other believers, fueled by denominational arrogance, and constructed by twisting the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy into a prejudicial condemnation of anything non-Adventist. These Adventists also see in the SOP justification for political liberalism—no doubt a variant of “Let us do evil that good may come.” Religious liberty departments of our church are heavily infested with such individuals. A better way is to drop politics altogether. We are looking for a National Sunday Law someday in the future, and we should not becloud this eschatological expectation with fight or flight paranoia OR apathy. Let us not exchange the patience of the saints for the panic of the saints, or the pleasure (worldliness) of the saints.
Other Adventists, see in the Bible overwhelming support for childbirth and pregnancy, and zero support for killing your child in the womb.
The timing of the leak is suspect, a political move calculated to soften potential damage from an upcoming mid-term election this year. Indicators are that this midterm (2022) election will significantly reduce the monolithic power of the current ruling party in Washington.
John Roberts, the historically compromised Supreme Court Chief Justice, vowed today to investigate the leak. If the culprit (leaker) is found, there is no evidence yet what punishment will be meted out to the individual(s). If it is deemed treason, the punishment could (and should be) be severe.
Whatever the outcome, let us remember that here we have no continuing city, and Christ has other sheep that will hear the call of the Good Shepherd and will become an eternal part of His flock (Hebrews 13:14-16; John 10:16-17). Consciousness of this special relationship will keep us both inspired and humble.
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“Lord why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? (Psalm 2:1).