Get ready for an insurrection

They put up barricades around the Supreme Court on Monday night. Years ago those words would have sounded like the ravings of a conspiracy theorist. Nobody threatened the Supreme Court, so nobody needed to be protected by a physical barrier. We were lawyers and scholars, citizens and patriots, not terrorists. What a silly thought.

Only it’s not so silly anymore. We are no longer cool and reasoned arbiters of the truth. We are zealots. The zealotry is most passionate when it comes to abortion.

When someone leaked a draft opinion of a decision that would effectively overturn Roe v. Wade, the barricades went up as the rhetoric flared. And that’s much scarier than anything that might happen if the draft becomes law.

It’s no secret that I’ve been pro-life for my entire adult life. There is no doubt about my reaction to the prospect that states will once again determine the legality of abortion: Pure joy.

But that’s my reaction at a human level, which is the most important one from a personal perspective but less relevant to this column. My reaction at the level of a woman who has observed the abortion industry and its mouthpieces for decades is apprehension. I know what is about to come. Judging from the hysteria displayed by those on the left, it will be an all-out siege on the civil state. If we thought that the riots of 2020 were bad, just wait and see what happens when women take to the streets and start screaming about their battered rights.

It started this week. A group of students from Catholic University went to the Supreme Court and prayed the rosary. That’s all they did. But as they were exercising their religious liberty, others exercised their own form of free expression by surrounding them and chanting mocking, hateful slogans. It was just one incident, but you don’t need to be Cassandra to see the future in those brief moments.

We have been on a battlefield of ideas for a very long time, but there were rules. I have prayed in front of Planned Parenthood clinics with my rosary. I have not blocked any entrances. I have written volumes about the immorality and illegality of Roe v. Wade. I’ve debated pro-choice advocates. I’ve successfully persuaded some people to share my pro-life views and have been completely incapable of changing other hearts and minds. All of this was done within a context of civility, legality, order.

But 2020 taught us that riots get attention, and action. And now that sense of lawlessness has infected the most august, sacred chambers of the highest court in the land. And that, even more than the overturn of Roe, is a threat to the body politic.

A very small circle is involved in preparing and disseminating these arguments, so it should be a fairly simple affair to figure out who leaked the draft. Given the unprecedented nature of this attack on the integrity of the court, it’s virtually guaranteed that the person will be identified in court circles. Whether that person is publicly unmasked is another issue, because there will be serious blowback from all sides if and when the person is revealed.

But the circle in which this person will, and should be vilified with the most passion and righteousness is the one that considers vigilantism to be an immoral, illegal and un-American act. Because that is exactly what the leak of this draft is, the vigilantism of one or more persons who believes that Supreme Court decisions do not belong to the branch of government charged with making them, but with public opinion. And that is a very dangerous idea.

I believe the leak of this decision is aimed at changing the course of elections, like the upcoming midterms. It may have that effect, but in unanticipated ways. Regardless of your opinion on abortion, if you are someone who respects the rule of law, you do not accept this sort of subversive intimidation of the people who make it. You do not like the thought that Supreme Court justices are being threatened on social media (it’s happening.) You do not like the fact that someone who was appointed by no one, confirmed by no one and known by only a small coterie of insiders could have the power to sway an election. And you will vote against the sort of person who supports that sort of jurisprudential vigilantism.

I am sure I will be writing more about Roe. But today, mixed in with the joy that comes from knowing this horrible decision is likely headed for the trash heap of history, is anger at those who want to trash the institutions of our present.