Glenn is wrong here

Glenn Reynolds is wrong on this one. The ACLU has done nothing but erode citizen's rights since its inception: the right to practice one's religion; the right to feel safe in one's home; the right of an unborn child to life, etc... Those rights have been abrogated in favor of the "rights" the ACLU espouses: the "right" to squelch all reference to religion in society, the "rights" of criminals to be released due to errors on the part of the police, the "right" of mothers-to-be to snuff out a life for no other reason than that it is "inconvenient". I am all for the Constitution, but let's temper that with some notion of what the Framers intended, not what some modern-day judge feels like legislating.

I for one would like to see Congress pass a statute stating that life begins at conception. Harry Blackmun's "opinion" in Roe v. Wade, that there is a compelling state interest in the life of the unborn child beginning at the end of the first trimester is nothing but bald legislation: he asserts that

"the 'compelling" point, in the light of present medical knowledge, is at approximately the end of the first trimester. This is so because of the now-established medical fact, referred to above at 149, that until the end of the first trimester mortality in abortion may be less than mortality in normal childbirth."

Upon what Constitutional principle is this assertion based? None! It is merely Harry Blackmun's personal opinion based upon his own reading of medical texts at the Mayo Clinic. This type of obiter dicta is what the ACLU is all about: promoting its own nihilist vision of the Constitution instead of a vision of the Constitution grounded in our own Anglo-American, Judeo-Christian heritage.

It is long past time when Congress should challenge the Supreme Court's overreaching in Roe. Let's urge Congress to make a specific finding that life begins at conception. Undoubtedly, the Court would have to take up this finding and I, for the life of me (and others), do not see how the Court could, within the limits of its Constitutional authority, find basis to dispute that. But that's the rub, isn't it? The liberal wing of the Court would undoubtedly attempt to seize on some pretext to do exactly that. We won't know, however, unless Congress asserts its moral and Constitutional authority, as the voice of the People, to stand up to the third branch of government that has arrogated much of the power of the first branch -- the power to legislate -- to itself.