First, the Supreme Court handed down a favorable decision in NIFLA v. Becerra, agreeing that pro-life crisis-pregnancy centers shouldn't have to post information about abortion.

Then, Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court's long-time conservative swing vote, announced his retirement.

This has opened the way to what will inevitably be an intense battle over his replacement, along with the core principles Kennedy helped to defend.

Above all, advocates and legislators seem to have one word in their minds as they prepare for this fight: Roe.

Over the past 45 years, Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that upheld a woman's right to obtain a legal, pre-viability abortion, has become infamous—loved by pro-choice feminists, reviled by the pro-lifers who see themselves as defenders of the unborn.

At many points throughout his long career on the Court, Kennedy provided the decisive vote in cases that dealt with controversial cultural questions, including LGBT rights and religious freedom.

He has been particularly influential in abortion-related cases, in part because his views have been mixed: While he has generally voted to uphold the fundamental principles outlined in Roe, he has at times expressed a deep moral ambivalence about abortion itself.

Without him on the Court, pro-life advocates see an opportunity to secure a firmly anti-abortion majority.

Overturning Roe v. Wade is not a straightforward political maneuver achieved in a few easy steps.

But now that Kennedy has stepped aside, pro-life advocates see an opportunity to tilt the Court toward their cause—and they have a clear strategy for making it happen. "We know what we've got ahead of us.

It's the fight of our lives, literally," said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the head of the pro-life advocacy group Susan B. Anthony List. "If this is the Roe vote, then it is the most consequential battle since 1973."

The story that has been told about Kennedy and abortion is one of indecision and persuasion.

According to a 1998 book by a former Supreme Court clerk, Edward Lazarus, Kennedy had been open, three decades ago, to casting a vote in a case that would have returned the question of abortion to the states.

But in 1992, Kennedy—a devout Roman Catholic and Ronald Reagan appointee—joined Justices David Souter and Sandra Day O'Connor in authoring Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld Roe while allowing for certain regulations and limits on abortion.

Not all critics have considered the book's account trustworthy, but its larger story about Kennedy's posture on abortion is evident in his judicial record.

His vote was essential in Casey, but he also wrote the opinion that upheld Congress's ban on so-called partial-birth abortions.

In 2016, he joined the Court's liberal justices in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, a decision that pushed back against abortion restrictions in Texas.

But just last week, he also joined the conservative majority in NIFLA v. Becerra; in his concurring opinion, he compared California's requirements for crisis-pregnancy centers to the free-speech restrictions imposed by authoritarian regimes.

As a result, Kennedy has not won many ardent admirers among advocates and scholars with firm positions on abortion. Continue reading

• Image: Desiring God

With Kennedy gone, a more conservative Supreme Court could overhaul key aspects of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, legal scholars say.

And any new justice selected by President Trump would likely seek to weaken the Environmental Protection Agency, curtail its ability to fight global warming, and weaken its protections over wetlands.

The reason has to do with simple math.

As on many other issues, Kennedy has functioned as the court's swing vote on the environment, occasionally joining with the court's four more liberal justices to preserve some aspect of green law.

"He's been on the court just over 30 years, and he's been in the majority in every single environmental case but one. You don't win without Kennedy," said Richard Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard who has argued 14 cases in front of the Supreme Court.

"I think more than the other more conservative justices, Kennedy seemed open to embracing the idea that tough national laws were necessary to address some types of problems," he told me.

"He was concerned about private-property rights and the marketplace, but open to the necessity of tough environmental laws."

Other legal scholars and environmental advocates agreed.

"The loss of Kennedy is not good news for environmental regulation," said Ann Carlson, a law professor at UCLA and the co-director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

The nation's highest court would now "almost certainly" be more hostile to environmental law than it has been since the founding of the EPA in 1970, said Jonathan Z. Cannon, a law professor at the University of Virginia.

"With the departure of Justice Kennedy, this is no time to mince words: We are in for the fight of our lives," said Trip Van Noppen, the president of the environmental-legal-advocacy group Earthjustice, in a statement. Continue reading

• Image: The Atlantic

Dr. Kengor is widely recognized for his scholarly work about the American presidency, the Cold War, and the history of communism.

His most recent book is Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage (WND Books, 2015), a deeply researched historical study of how radical leftists, for close to two centuries, have worked to undermine and fundamentally change—or even destroy—marriage, family life, and traditional social structures and relationships.

Carl E. Olson, editor of Catholic World Report, recently corresponded with Dr. Kengor about Takedown.

CWR: Toward the end of your book, in writing about the socialist support in Cuba of "gay marriage," you note, "As long as the traditional family is reversed, Marxism is advanced."

That's a fairly succinct summary of your book, isn't it? Why was Karl Marx so opposed to the traditional family and marriage? What shaped and informed his ideological disdain for both?

Dr. Paul Kengor: There are a lot of factors that go into answering that question, but two stand out: First, Karl Marx showed personal disdain for the institution of marriage. He was unfaithful to his wife and, all around, a poor husband.

I don't mean that to sound judgmental or uncharitable. Sure, those of us who are husbands are all lacking, myself included, but Marx was a bad case.

You can read the details in the book, but, among other things, Marx had a sexual relationship with the longtime family nursemaid, who he apparently impregnated, though he always insisted the child was neither his nor his responsibility.

We also can't neglect Marx's partner in The Communist Manifesto, Friedrich Engels, who joined him in writing of the "abolition of the family" and held married life in even lower contempt. Marx showed his opposition to monogamous marriage by breaking his vow to his wife, but Engels showed his disregard by simply refusing to marry the many mistresses that wanted him to make honest women out of them. Marx and Engels sniffed that "bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common." Continue reading

Source and Image

• Catholic World Report

The court struck down a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), defining marriage as between one man and one woman, and refused to rule on a challenge to a Californian court decision in favour of gay marriage.

By clearing the way for same-sex marriage in California, the court effectively increased to 13 the number of states that allow it.

In the first case, the court ruled 5-4 that DOMA violated the constitution insofar as it denied federal benefits to same-sex couples legally married in their own states.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy argued that the marriage laws are controlled by the states, and the federal government cannot deny benefits to people who are legally married under state law.

"The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity," said Kennedy, who is a Catholic.

In an angrily worded minority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia — who is also a Catholic — said the majority opinion suggested that anyone opposing same-sex marriage intends "to condemn, demean, or humiliate" others.

Rather, he explained, DOMA "did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence — indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history."

"By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency," Justice Scalia said, "the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition."

A statement from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said: "The court got it wrong."

The bishops said: "The preservation of liberty and justice requires that all laws, federal and state, respect the truth, including the truth about marriage."

Sources:

Catholic News Agency

St Louis Review

New York Times

Image: KSFY