Supreme Court leak is the real scandal

If you can’t pack ’em, undermine ’em.

That’s the progressive playbook for handling the Supreme Court, which was roiled yesterday after a draft opinion indicating the court was about to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked.

According to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, the ruling indicated by the leaked draft doesn’t represent the court’s final decision.

That mattered little — the outrage from the left was fast and furious.

Exactly as the leaker no doubt intended.

In the years since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, the liberal stance on abortion was that it is a critical good, vital to the lives of women. Gloria Steinem popularized the quote “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament” back in ’71. The liberal pro-abortion rhetoric hasn’t changed much since then. Now “abortion is health care.”

Any dissenting, pro-life view is regressive, repressive and worthy of disdain. Of course reaction to the leaked decision draft would be outrage.

But the protesters gathered at the Supreme Court yesterday and those blasting the move in interviews and on social media are missing the point.

The egregious act at hand isn’t the impending overturning of Roe, it’s that the Supreme Court has been successfully politicized and fashioned into a cultural weapon.

Whoever leaked the decision draft no doubt anticipated the protests and the pundits, the fury at the victory being handed to pro-lifers.

There is talk of abortion being a flashpoint in the midterm elections.

U.S. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch issued this statement: “While I understand that the draft opinion may not be final, its misguided reasoning represents an abrupt and wrong-headed departure from the basic Constitutional

protections identified by Roe and an inappropriate surrender to the continuing onslaught of unwarranted legislation that has been introduced at the State level nationwide seeking to effectively eliminate the right to privacy from government interference into health care decisions. If the Supreme Court is to remain a credible arbiter of Constitutional law, I strongly believe that Roe v. Wade must remain the law of the land. “

If the Supreme Court is to remain a credible arbiter of Constitutional law, it cannot be crafted into a political weathervane.

“To the extent this betrayal of the confidences of the Court was intended to undermine the integrity of our operations, it will not succeed,” said Chief Justice Roberts.

He added: “I have directed the Marshal of the Court to launch an investigation into the source of the leak.”

Whoever did it should be named and shamed — and prosecuted.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is on board.

“Last night’s stunning breach was an attack on the independence of the Supreme Court. By every indication, this was yet another escalation in the radical left’s ongoing campaign to bully and intimidate federal judges and substitute mob rule for the rule of law,” he said in a statement.

““This lawless action should be investigated and punished as fully as possible. The Chief Justice must get to the bottom of it and the Department of Justice must pursue criminal charges if applicable,” he said.

This breach should be the focus of massive outrage — unfortunately, it is not.

There has been a lot of talk about defending democracy in the U.S. Upholding the sanctity of the Supreme Court is Job One.