Opinion ID: 1029238
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Future

Text: All civilizations will be measured in the fullness of time. Perhaps fine art, great invention, sustained prosperity, or enhanced longevity mark the quality of civilized life. Perhaps, I say, because there must be something more. How a society treats its most vulnerable members may do more than grandiosity to shape its lasting worth. A partially born child is among the weakest, most helpless beings in our midst and on that account exerts a special claim on our protection. So we can talk at length about facial challenges and as-applied challenges, and standard D & E procedures and intact D & E procedures, and anatomical landmarks, and disarticulation, and fetal demise. And we can deploy this terminology to disguise what is happening, in the name of our founding document no less. The future, however, will not be similarly misled. The fact is that wecivilized peopleare retreating to the haven of our Constitution to justify dismembering a partly born child and crushing its skull. Surely centuries hence, people will look back on this gruesome practice done in the name of fundamental law by a society of high achievement. And they will shudder. Others may see this issue differently, and they possess the means to enact their genuine convictions. As abhorrent as I find the procedure at issue, I would not deny the ability of democratic majorities to sanction it in law. It is the democratic process that enhances the mutual respect through law that both sides to this charged debate must work to achieve. But to jump from legislative enactment to constitutional edict is a leap too far. To say that our founding document and fundamental values affirmatively sanction this procedure  based on an argument over the precise timing of a doctor's intent to extinguish the existence of an emerging infantis to invite coming generations to judge harshly the coldness of our ways. My fine colleague in dissent expresses his view that this concurrence represents some disagreement on my part with the Supreme Court's abortion jurisprudence. Post at 197-98. I would remind him, however, that it is I who would follow the Supreme Court's clear instructions regarding the inadvisability of facial challenges and the Supreme Court's decision in Gonzales v. Carhart which upheld a federal statute closely akin to the one that my dissenting colleague would strike down. The finale to my friend's dissent misses the point. This case is not about abortion generally, but rather the particular practice of partial birth abortion to which the Virginia statute addresses itself. As to this practice, I have no hesitancy in expressing my personal opposition, but only to underscore the point that I would respect completely a democratic judgment that runs contrary to my view. The dissent notes the moral complexity of the abortion issue, a proposition with which I agree. The dissent embraces certain of Dr. Fitzhugh's empirical assertions, the validity of which I am in no position to judge. But both the moral debate and the empirical assertions caution yet once more against the loss of all faith in our federal system, the foreclosure of prospects for legislative compromise, and the preemption of democratic liberty by the courts. And that is what in the last analysis this case is about: how the question of partial birth abortion is to be decided. It is wrong to recognize no discernible limits on the ability of courts to constitutionalize this heinous practice down to its last detail. Such treatment of the truly helpless will not stand the test of time. Virginia's statute invokes the consent of the governed to soften the sting of the impending rebuke. Our invocation of precepts found nowhere in the Constitution's text or history will not provide us a comparable defense. Where the people's will and moral claims on behalf of the powerless are aligned, plying the Constitution to defeat both is a wrong future generations will not overlook. They will understand this inversion of law's legitimate role in protecting the weak, and they will ask: What on earth were they thinking? What on earth were they thinking? I would reverse the judgment of the district court.