All hail Taranto! The conquering hero!

The following is taken from Opinion Journal. I clip it here for posterity's sake: a slam dunk point-by-point rebuttal of a liberal going haywire.

Roe v. Truth
With the Alito hearings in garbage time this morning, we suppose we were one of about six people still watching. But we did catch a moment we thought was worth highlighting, from the anti-Alito testimony of Kate Michelman, who had this to say about Alito's partial dissent in Casey v. Planned Parenthood:

When he ruled that a Pennsylvania law requiring women to notify their husbands before obtaining an abortion was not, quote, an undue burden, there was no sense that a woman like me ever existed or even mattered.

Earlier, Michelman had told of her own brush with abortion regulation in the dark days before Roe v. Wade. She discovered she was pregnant after her husband left her, and decided to abort the child. She did not have to resort to coat alleys and back hangers, but the law did require the approval of a panel of physicians, who first subjected her to an intrusive interrogation. Nor was that the end of it:

I was awaiting the procedure when a nurse arrived to tell me that state law imposed yet another humiliating burden. The government required me to obtain my husband's consent. I was forced to leave the hospital, find where he was living, and ask him to give me his permission.

Michelman's linking this tale to Alito's opinion in Casey is highly misleading. The regulation that Alito voted to uphold did not require a husband's consent, only notification. Further, as we noted in November, as a practical matter it didn't even require notification. It mandated only that the wife sign a statement asserting that she had notified her husband--or, in the alternative, that she could not locate him. Unlike the regulation that actually applied in Michelman's case, this one would have imposed no burden whatever on her.

Michelman's assertion that Alito's opinion reflected "no sense that a woman like me ever existed or even mattered" is false as well. In fact, Alito expressly distinguished a situation such as Michelman's from that faced by a woman whose abortion was governed by the Pennsylvania law in question:

Taken together, Justice O'Connor's opinions reveal that an undue burden does not exist unless a law (a) prohibits abortion or gives another person the authority to veto an abortion or (b) has the practical effect of imposing "severe limitations," rather than simply inhibiting abortions " 'to some degree' " or inhibiting "some women." . . .

In this case, the plaintiffs . . . did not prove that this provision would impose an undue burden. Section 3209 does not create an "absolute obstacle" or give a husband "veto power."

Michelmanic mendacity is all too common on the "choice" side of the abortion debate. Consider this, from a Sunday New York Times editorial:

The White House has tried to create an air of inevitability around Judge Alito's confirmation. But the public is skeptical. In a new Harris poll, just 34 percent of those surveyed said they thought he should be confirmed, while 31 percent said he should not, and 34 percent were unsure. Nearly 70 percent said they would oppose Judge Alito's nomination if they thought he would vote to make abortion illegal--which it appears he might well do.

Even with the weasel words "appears" and "might," this is a false statement. As we noted last week, the poll question was misleading. There is zero chance that Alito or any other Supreme Court justice will "vote to make abortion illegal." That is a decision for legislators, not judges.

The Harris poll pops up in another Times editorial today, and this time the paper gets the law right but misstates what the poll asked:

Judge Alito's assertions that he will keep an open mind on Roe are little comfort. With nearly 70 percent of Americans saying in a recent Harris poll that they would oppose Judge Alito's confirmation if they thought he would vote against constitutional protection for abortion rights, he was not likely to say at his hearings that he would do so. Few nominees would be so brave or foolhardy.

Of course, if public opinion were really so solidly in favor of legal abortion, overturning Roe v. Wade would be unproblematic for those who support it. After all, democratically elected legislators would not be so brave or foolhardy as to do away with a legal right that 70% of the people support. It's reasonable enough to say we need the Supreme Court to protect the rights of unpopular individuals from the will of the majority. It's preposterous to say we need the Supreme Court to insulate popular policies from the democratic process. All of which leads us to think that, although only a small minority of Americans believe that abortion is murder and should be always illegal, the American public is considerably less pro-abortion than the Times would have us believe.

A report in the San Francisco Chronicle shows what some "pro-choice" advocates think of the Constitution:

Bay Area abortion-rights activists say a Roman Catholic group's advertisements on hundreds of BART trains and in scores of stations--attacking the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision and asking "Abortion: Have we gone too far?"--have gone too far in a region known for its progressive politics.

Many of the ads have been torn down or defaced since the campaign began three weeks ago.

"I think every woman has noticed them,'' said Suzanne "Sam" Joi, a member of Code Pink, a social justice and anti-war group. "I couldn't believe BART would allow something like this. Why are they doing this?''

Uh, maybe because the right to free speech actually is in the Constitution? Why should anyone respect fake constitutional rights if these people refuse to respect real ones?