Brooks on Abortion

He's not really anti-choice, you see. It's just that Roe vs. Wade has made politics so nasty.

In his latest foray David Brooks tries to persuade his readers that Roe vs. Wade has poisoned America's political dialogue. Rather than allowing abortion policy emerge from the legislative process, which would have been seen as legitimate, abortion rights were created by judicial fiat. This sparks today's anti-judiciary, anti-filibuster jihad and pulled liberals from a focus on people to a focus on the courts. The product has been total war ever since, and threatens to wreck the protections for minority rights, etc. The solution? Overturn Roe vs. Wade.

Need I remind Mr. Brooks that it is always those who resist oppression who start the war?Tyrants would be most pleased if everyone else were pacifists. It is not pro-choice forces who started the war - they are not forcing anti-choicers to have abortions. The abortion rights movement simply believes that it is women who should make this decision, and not have it imposed on them by a bunch of religious fanatics possessed of a flawed teleological conception of biology and who openly express a desire for women to "know their place." And does Mr. Brooks think that the anti-abortion crowd really would have thrown in the towel if they'd lost the legislative battle? Because if he does, I have a bridge to sell him.

Brooks' essay is riddled with errors, but allow me to focus just on one. Brooks asserts that it would have been better to allow the abortion debate to work its way out within the the traditional mode of political debate, i.e. as a product of elections, legislation, and compromise. But what this assumes is that abortion is an issue like street lamps or filling potholes. It's not. It is a fundamental question of human autonomy, and state governments are notoriously bad dealing with those sorts of issues. Or has he forgotten civil rights?

And abortion is precisely that, a question of rights, of fundamental liberties. It is to deal with these questions that we have courts. The purpose of the courts is to defend human liberties, especially if they are controversial. The court was right to act because it is its job to rule in exactly these sorts of cases.

Brooks shakes his head in supposed sorrow at the war over the courts, but he does so while simply handing the Republican agenda more ammunition. His essay ultimately blames Democrats for the current crisis, much in the same way that a wife-beater might claim that his wife made him do it by smarting off. He fails to mention the many occassions that Republicans have abused Senate minority prerogatives like holds and filibusters.Republicans are not attempting to fashion a legislative compromise - they are attempting to ram through laws that effectively eliminate the right to an abortion. And the filibuster war is over the attempt by Republicans to pack the court with anti-choice (not just anti-Roe) judges, judges who would do the very thing that Brooks opposes: rule by judicial decree.

This dude is just a hack for the right. No person should ever be fooled by his reasonable appearance. David Brooks is Newt Gingrich with less hair.