Full scorched earth
Alito cited Matthew Hale in his draft. Who? Bess Levin at Vanity Fair has the deets:
As Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern notes, the draft—which could change before a the final ruling, as could the various justices’ votes—doesn’t just lay out the case for why Roe should be overturned, it goes full scorched earth. Alito, Stern writes, “does not seek out any middle path. He disparages Roe and its successors as dishonest, illegitimate, and destructive to the court, the country, and the Constitution. He quotes a wide range of anti-abortion activists, scholars, and judges who view abortion as immoral and barbaric; there’s even a footnote that approvingly cites Justice Clarence Thomas’s debunked theory that abortion is a tool of eugenics against Black Americans.” The opinion is an appalling, heinous attack on people who have relied on Roe for nearly half a century, and the most sickening part is that the conservative justice clearly doesn’t give a shit that obliterating the landmark ruling will ruin countless lives. In fact, one might argue, that’s all part of the plan. And if you needed further proof that Alito is pure evil and wants to take the U.S. back to a time when women’s bodies were property for men to control, know that one of the people he cited in his opinion was an English jurist who defended marital rape and had women executed for “witchcraft.”
Yes, Alito literally quoted this guy, who was born in 1609, as a defense for ending Roe v. Wade in 2022. “Two treatises by Sir Matthew Hale,” Alito enthusiastically writes, “described abortion of a quick child who died in the womb as a ‘great crime’ and a ‘great misprision.’ See M. Hale, Pleas of the Crown.”
Well if Matthew Hale said it it must be true.
There’s a certain irony in a Catholic citing English Puritan jurisprudence considering the sort of shit Puritans did to Catholics when they were in charge.
There was also the sort of shit that Catholics did to Protestants when they were in charge.
But (x 3) that would imply that ever since at least the time of Moses, the Law was just politics tarted up. That in turn would imply that the pub test would trump learned jurisprudence.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/did-the-pm-pass-the-pub-test-why-we-re-riveted-by-politicians-unscripted-encounters-20220408-p5ac14.html
But they can all agree that women must be kept in their place, whatever the cost.
While Alito dehumanizes women to be male vessels of sperm for species continuation, transactivists dehumanize women by changing the human focus from sex to gender/gender identity. The Catholics teach that masturbation is a mortal sin because it is sexual pleasure without the possibilty of conception, and that is the reason that they don’t allow any form of gay sex, either. I had a priest explain that during confession when I was a teen struggling to be good. But rather than clean their own house of priests who violate children, they seek to dictate the sexual mores of the entire society. I think Jesus said something about motes and planks, but the Catholic Hierarchy is immune to charges of hypocrisy.