Obama has chosen Sonia Sotomayor as Justice Souter’s replacement. Although her rulings have tended to be very activist and liberal-and have been overturned by the Supreme Court on several occasions-she has dealt very little with abortion.
Her Two Abortion-Related Cases
My guess would be that this scant background on abortion cases is considered a plus by the Obama administration, since “How do you feel about Roe v. Wade?” is such a popular question at senate confirmation hearings.
The two cases she has covered dealing with abortion have seemed to support pro-lifers. In one case, she ruled Bush was allowed to institute the Mexico City Policy-limiting government funds from going to overseas abortion organizations. But my guess would be that the reverse is also true-if the government can choose to not give money to these groups, likely they can also give money if they choose to…so we don’t really gain much on the decision.
The second case was concerning a clinic blockade from 1989 in West Hartford, Connecticut. When protesters employed techniques of passive resistance-ie going limp, refusing to unlock their chains-police officers there dragged them by the elbows and used chokeholds to remove the group. Sotomayer ruled that this amount of force was unnecessarily violent and abusive against the pro-lifers.
So really, it’s too soon to tell how Sotomayer’s nomination and appointment to the Supreme Court would affect pro-lifers. So, as always, we will continue to pray for wisdom and conversion of the Obama administration and keep our hope in God.
The State of Marriage In California
The other big story that you’ve likely heard about is California’s Supreme Court upholding the legality of Proposition 8-the constitutional amendment that Californian’s passed last year defining marriage as between one man and one woman.
The proposition was determined to be an amendment to the state constitution, rather than a revision, meaning that 50% of the popular vote was enough to add it to the constitution.
But because it’s an amendment, it doesn’t get rid of the 18,000 so-called “gay marriages” that took place before it was passed. So now California exists in a sad, strange sort of limbo-neither fully supporting marriage as one man and one woman, or as between any two people. It’s a state that, I think, is doomed to fail.
At any rate, homosexual advocates have promised to continuing fighting-and so will defenders of traditional marriage.
