Minority rule is killing Roe
Re “With abortion rights at stake, it’s time to stand up,” editorial, May 4
Americans have not been living under majority rule since the Republican Party learned to game the system.
No one who has been paying attention can be surprised by the leaked draft decision from the Supreme Court that would overturn Roe vs. Wade. Former President Trump’s three court appointments were made with the specific goal of overturning Roe, a landmark 1973 decision that polls show up to 80% of the public wants to keep.
Our system of government was thought to guarantee fairness and democracy.
With gerrymandering, blatant lies, use of the electoral college and other tactics, the Republicans strive to ensure minority rule.
The Supreme Court, three of whose justices were chosen by a president who did not win the popular vote, will hand down a vastly unpopular ruling that hurts poor women. The founders could not have anticipated such manipulation. Personally, I feel sick. Stephanie McIntyre
Simi Valley
The constitutional argument that underpins the Supreme Court’s leaked draft decision in Roe vs. Wade is supported by many citizens of good intent and constitutional scholars of high repute, despite the relatively rare occasions that settled precedent is explicitly reversed by the Supreme Court.
If Roe is reversed this year, it will have been settled law for almost 50 years. By contrast, the notorious Dred Scott decision, handed down in 1857, was reversed within years, which appears even less respectful of settled precedent until one realizes that it took the bloodiest conflict in American history — the Civil War — to reverse that precedent by the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments.
Furthermore, the Korematsu decision in 1944 upheld the forced removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast during World War II. A year later, the war ended, but Korematsu remained the law of the land until it was reversed by the Supreme Court in 2018.
This goes to show, perhaps, that the strict constructionist concerns of the draft decision — based on a legitimate and widely accepted constitutional principle — compelled a reversal of Roe’s settled precedent. Michael Abzug
Los Angeles
Watching the appointment of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and
Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court was like watching the massing of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border. We knew an attack was coming, but we didn’t want to believe it would really happen.
These justices, having assumed their life-tenured roles, are free to unleash their right-wing ideology and impose their religious views on the people of this country. It was a given that they would soon act to take away the rights of women to make personal medical decisions that affect themselves and their families.
A woman knows if she can raise a child. Her decision must be respected.
The leak of the court’s opinion was wrong, but if this ruling does come to pass, it will serve to document for history the corruption of an institution that was designed to be a stronghold for justice in America. Marcia Goldstein
Laguna Woods
The Supreme Court’s purported decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade overturns more than a half-century of precedent, and has effectively thrown out the doctrine of stare decisis.
This opinion has rendered the court an illegitimate institution, and its decisions should be afforded the same respect as the court has shown for the rule of law: none. Richard Lubetzky Los Angeles