On of the most talked about topics at present is President Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court. It was certain that Biden would pick a candidate who has an acknowledged ideology with a legal track record to match when he made his decision. He also stated that he would choose a black woman. Albeit that Biden makes so many gaffs that he has been subjected to much ridicule at home and abroad, it is particularly sad that his thought processes work with an overlay of sexism and racism. How sad it is for the black woman nominated to know that, out of all the qualified persons with ideologies favored by the President, she was selected over others, not by her accomplishments, but only because of her gender and skin color, the essence of the motivations so many people work to erase.

Now that she has been before the Senate (the hearing concluded yesterday), the public is learning more about Judge Katanji Brown Jackson. Unsurprisingly, she ducked questions about her previous rulings and her views on the Constitution. However, we learned that she has been shockingly soft on child sex abusers, and she was unable to offer any explanation for repeatedly giving the absolute shortest and weakest punishments possible.

Furthermore, she stated that she does not know when life begins. In 1973, Justice Blackmun, in the Roe v Wade decision, wrote the same thing on behalf of the Court, saying that the Court did not know when life begins. However, in the 1960’s every medical book in the world contained the information that the Supreme Court claimed not to know: life begins at the moment of conception and cells divide over and over while the tiny growing human person is shaped into a baby ready to be born and live outside the mother’s body.

It is amply demonstrated by abortion survivors that the tiny growing new life is a person, and abortion survivors declare that they had a right to live when their lives were almost taken by abortion. It is proving impossible to dispute that the unborn are real people. The assertion is powerful that their lives are just as worthy as the lives of anyone else. So, what about all the babies who are killed…that is what the Senate committee wanted to know from Ms. Jackson. In fact, everyone knows when life begins, and abortionists know that they are killing a developing baby, a real person. They just do it anyway. It is increasingly the case that those who support abortion, like Jackson, know it is the deliberate taking of a human life. So, if our leaders in the highest positions and our Supreme Court Justices do not value the lives of the weakest and most defenseless among us, then what kind of people are we?

Jackson also stated that the legal cases of Roe and Casey, which established a woman’s “right” to an abortion, were “settled law.” While not surprising that she would support abortion, legal scholars have commented since 1973 that the reasoning used in the Roe decision were baffling, summoning fragments of assertions in various amendments and then drawing conclusions that were clearly not the intent of the amendments when they were originally debated and supported.

Likewise, the Roe decision was based on such faulty assertions about when life begins, the trimester system, and fetal viability that use of such arguments to justify abortion is just plain scientifically dishonest. The Court also failed to explain why the very simple and plain language of the 10th amendment does not give the individual states the right to regulate abortion according to the values of the people living in those communities. While Jackson stated to believe that future Courts must follow the precedence set by prior decisions, these issues were far from “settled” in Roe or Casey or any of the other related cases since.

A very good example of how the Court can make very bad decisions that must be corrected is the Dred Scott decision in 1857. Jackson claims she does not know what the issues were in that case. That is a very disappointing statement, because it means either that she lacks enough legal knowledge to even qualify as a lawyer, or she is blatantly lying.

Dred Scott sued to obtain his freedom from slavery because his owner had taken him to reside in a slave free state and a slave free territory for a while (too much more detail to relate here). The Court said that Scott did not have a right to sue because a “Negro” could never be a US citizen, amid other racist comments, and that the US did not have the authority to say anything for or against slavery in the new territories (an important issue of the day and a major issue in the lead up to the Civil War). At least some of the Justices were slave owners, and no Justice recused himself for conflict of interest.

Should this remain the law of the land? Or, is Jackson simply saying something she knows not to be true in an effort to protect any revision of Roe and other Court decisions based on Roe? The Dred Scott decision is often said to be the most egregious example of the Court’s bad decisions. In my mind, the decision in Roe is an equally egregious example of convoluted and illogical reasoning, and it has influenced the lives of hundreds of millions more people than the issue of slavery leading to the Civil War, and it has cost the lives of sixty million more people than died in the Civil War.

Jackson declared that “all Supreme Court cases are precedential” and “their rulings have to be followed” (all must include Dred Scott and Roe). Once again, there are no surprises here, but it does point out once again that elections to the highest positions in government do matter. One can only hope that Biden will be forced to select another candidate and that confirmation of any dishonest ideologue can be delayed and eventually declined.