Sir, – I was struck by the tone of your editorial on the potential overruling of the Roe v Wade decision ("A legal-political earthquake", May 4th), in which you accuse the US supreme court of "overt politicisation", of doing "deep and lasting" damage to the US political system, and of threatening to make the country "ungovernable".
Would you ever mount such an attack on a decision of the Irish Supreme Court? Your newspaper has correctly railed against political and media attacks on the independence of judges in the United Kingdom, Poland and Hungary in recent years. Should the independence of judges in the United States not be similarly defended?
The present controversy is a natural consequence of the increasing reliance on unelected judges to impose controversial policy changes which do not have sufficient electoral support to be implemented in law. You can’t celebrate a 1973 US supreme court decision in support of abortion, and then accuse it of “overt politicisation” when they rule against abortion 2022. Either both decisions are correct, or both are wrong.
If the retention of the so-called right to abortion across all 50 states is “supported by a clear majority of Americans”, as your editorial states, then why can’t that majority be used to pass it into law by the Congress and Senate, rather than through the courts? The simple reason is that no such majority exists. Support for abortion is far more opaque, with opposition growing steadily in recent decades as the consequences of widespread abortion became clear.
Judges are not genies who grant political wishes, and courts do not exist to mollify a vocal section of the electorate or to bow to political and media pressure. They can only adjudicate on the cases before them, and the law as they see it.
The scrapping of Roe v Wade, a decision which should never have been made in the first place, would throw the issue of abortion back into the political and electoral spheres where it belongs.
Yours etc.,
BARRY WALSH,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.
Sir, – The leaked draft opinion on Roe v Wade attributed to US supreme court Justice Samuel Alito is an attack on the equal protection provision of the 14th amendment of the US constitution. The first section of the amendment contains the clause popularly known as the “equal protection” clause; this requires that everyone must be equally protected and equally treated under the law. The 14th amendment also establishes the right to due process at the state level. Due process has been used by the US supreme court in past decisions to strike down state legislation that restricts personal liberties and interests not explicitly mentioned in the constitution, like the right to privacy. The 14th amendment to the constitution largely expanded protections of rights for citizens at the state level. If the leaked document becomes the actual ruling of the present court, then citizens in some states will be denied a right declared for citizens in other states. This is wholly inconsistent with the principle of equal justice under the law. If state legislatures are permitted by such a ruling to restrict a civil right, what would stop such restrictions being placed on other current rights not specifically listed in the US constitution? – Yours, etc,
DAN DONOVAN,
Dungarvan,
Co Waterford.
Sir, – In your recent editorial you claim that the overruling of Roe v Wade could “potentially endanger legal protection for rights ranging from same-sex marriage to contraception”. While this makes for a catchy political slogan, nobody who has actually read the draft judgment could reach that conclusion.
The judgment explains in detail that the rights to privacy which flowed from the Griswold case in 1965, including the rights to marry and contraception, are unaffected by the overruling of Roe v Wade. The judges state that the supreme court was wrong in 1973 when it grouped abortion with these other rights, since they were inherently a private matter, whereas the issue of abortion affected a third party, namely the “fetal life”, to use the phrase used by the judges in Roe v Wade, which it acknowledged the existence of.
It is also curious to criticise the US supreme court for being “ready to abandon precedent”, when this is a feature of every common law jurisdiction the world over. The Irish Supreme Court has abandoned many seminal precedents over the last century, most recently in 2015 when it scrapped the “Kenny rule” of evidence, a sweeping change which has made it easier for the Garda to mount prosecutions against those accused of criminal offences.
Politicians in the United States who bemoan the overturning of the Roe v Wade precedent are perfectly happy to campaign for the scrapping of precedents in controversial cases such as Citizens United (which allows unlimited fundraising) and in Heller (which protects the right to own guns). So why do they, or your newspaper, believe that Roe v Wade should be protected from being revised or scrapped? – Yours, etc,
THOMAS RYAN BL,
Harolds Cross,
Dublin 6W.
Sir, – In the original Roe v Wade case, the decision to legalise abortion was imposed on all Americans by a group of seven white men whose average age was 66.
The decision to reverse that policy has been taken by a group of five judges which includes a woman and an African-American man, and two people in their early 50s.
Surely this increased diversity of gender, race and age is something which should be celebrated by liberal campaigners? Or is diversity only to be celebrated when it results in policies which they agree with? – Yours, etc,
SARAH-ANNE CLEARY,
Strokestown,
Co Roscommon.
A chara, – Daniel Geary repeats the stereotype of "white men" in the US being reactionary, conservative and generally socially regressive, in this case with regards to abortion law ("Repeal of Roe v Wade may have liberal silver lining", Opinion & Analysis, May 4th). This is not supported by any available data, which shows that neither gender or race are particularly reliable predictors of being "pro-choice" or "pro-life". Levels of educational attainment and household income are, but this is an uncomfortable reality for both sides in a highly polarised debate.
The negative “white men” stereotype would seem to arise from intellectual laziness, namely the clearly false conclusion that if X per cent of highly vocal conservatives are white men this must mean that X per cent of white men hold these views. This crude form of analysis is rejected out of hand when applied to any other demographic group, even where the evidence is far more persuasive. – Is mise,
DAVE SLATER,
Kilkea,
Co Kildare.