I see the confirmation of Judge Roberts as inevitable. I also see that John G. Roberts is bright, and a person who learns from experience. My hope is that he learned from the confirmation hearings.
John Roberts stands to win confirmation in the Senate. As a legal scholar, he clearly has a good mind. As a jurist, he has a very short record. Conservative? No question. Able to argue all sides of any issue persuasively? He's got the skills. Openness regarding his record? Not so good, but we can, and should, also fault RoveCo for that.
I am of two minds regarding Judge Roberts. I plainly don't agree with many of his positions. For example,I am think he should have recused himself on Hamdan, for he was in the midst of discussing his nomination while ruling in, named defendant, Bush's favor.
At the same time, the guy really knows the Supreme Court. He knows the law. He has clearly conservative positions on most of the law, and his obfuscations showed this to a T.
So, why the divided mind? Simple. It was a brief look on Judge Robert's face.
On day one of the hearings, Senator Feinstein was giving a little background to her position on the right of privacy for every woman in the country to control their bodies. And, I have agreed with Sen. Feinstein's positions since the sixties.
Sen. Feinstein told of a young woman, a college student, who was forced to go to Mexico for a back alley abortion. A hat was passed to collect for the trip and medical fees. This young woman had the abortion, returned to Stanford, and subsequently had complications resulting from the botched procedure. Apparently sterile conditions were not guaranteed in Tijuana. This woman suffered great loss, and subsequently could not get pregnant. Ever.
Diane Feinstein also noted another young woman, a friend of hers, who committed suicide rather than have the baby.
In the late sixties, one complication of self-inflicted or back alley abortions, was infection. If a woman was lucky, a course of antibiotics did the trick. If not, gangrene could set in. I worked in an ER when just such a case of gangrene was brought in. I have never forgotten the smell. I have never forgotten the young woman who took days, and days, and days in Intensive care. She did not recover from her knitting needle abortion. She died. And I will never forget her death. It made, for that young woman, a decision of desparation a decision of death. Not life, but death from a painful, horrific infection.
Too many young women died back then. The rich in the sixties would have resources to travel to distant clinics to have an abortion in clean surroundings. The poor used knitting needles and coat hangers. They died from infection, or lost the ability to ever have a child. Ever.
Now, it could be all of us suffering with our daughters, sisters, friends. If there is no right of privacy, where will the women go to get good care. All of which appears to have taken me a little off course from Judge Roberts qualifications. I am directly on point here.
My hope is that he learned in the hearings, as we saw a little of him during that time.
You see, that first day of hearings, while Sen. Feinstein was telling of her friends horrors with botched abortions, the camera swept to Judge Robert's face. And there it was. The Look. The one when you hear truth and it slaps you on the head. And it hurts. Judge Roberts showed that momentary rush of horror. It was as if he were slapped awake. That he hadn't thought that young women would risk their lives, end their ability to conceive a child, or die, rather than carry a child.
That look caught my attention. Judge Roberts seemed, possibly for the first time, to really connect the dots. Policy has real consequences. Death, infection, life, disfigurement, disability. All very real. Not a paper argument. Legal decisions do influence life. And death.
It is the right of privacy undergirding the right to all health care measures that makes abortion safe. Sure, abortion may be occurring too often. But remember the rich girls who went to far off clinics when abortion was illegal here. They will continue to travel. And the poor will have the black robed moralists in their bedrooms deciding the course of their lives, or possibly forcing women to risk their lives. The judge deciding privacy is not a right for women will be the judge that sees an increase in back alley abortions. Decisions are policies. Life and Death.
In those few seconds, and that look of horror spoke loudly for all of those seconds, I thought Judge Roberts might have gotten it. Policy, and court decisions can irreversibly affect a woman's life, or could result in an obscene loss of life for a family. My hope, in the face of inevitable confirmation, that Judge Roberts will "get it" once he is on the Supreme Court.
Now, if Judge Roberts could just focus on those few uncomfortable seconds, we might just have a Justice who "gets it". It is a small, dim ray of hope, but in the face of inevitable confirmation, I'll take whatever I can get.