In offering analysis after President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to be on the Supreme Court, Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren opined that conservatives seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade are effectively spitting on the Constitution.
Lahren has been outspoken in her adherence to abortion rights. She was separated from Glenn Beck's "The Blaze TV" last year because of her inconsistent opinions about abortion. This was sparked by an appearance on ABC's The View in which she argued that it was hypocritical to be anti-choice and be a small government conservative. Beck insisted that he wanted to terminate Lahren for lacking intellectual integrity.
“I can’t speak for the company and why they did it, but it had nothing to do with being pro-choice...
What I have a problem with is somebody who will change their point of view or that will say absolutely crazy, red meat things, and not have any intellectual firepower to back it up. Have the intellectual integrity to be able to back things up.”
Now Lahren laments that some conservatives want a Supreme Court to carry out religious judicial activism to get rid of Roe v. Wade (1973). Tantalizing pro-choice red meat but it like the pink slime substitute which some fast food outlets use to sell dollar menu items to a hungry public even though it causes indigestion.
Lahren assumes that any rollback of Roe would be premised on religious issues. Even the Roe decision recognizes that government has interests in unborn life in the last trimester that is viable. Prenatal medicine has made great leaps of advancement so viability is pushed closer to the 20th week of pregnancy. No signs of religion in this hermaneutic. And that does not even consider the scientific fact that human life begins at the moment of conception
Pro-Choice jurisprudence currently rests on the shaky foundation of abortion as being included in a right to privacy that is within penumbras and emanations of the Bill of Rights, as applied to states by the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Blackmun's holding in Roe is a quintessential example of judicial activism, legislating from the bench for the entire nation.
Conceptually, a texualist originalist led Supreme Court could rule that "the right to privacy" is not enumerated within the Federal Constitution and that the Tenth Amendment is applicable. This would throw the abortion issue back to the states, where it resided prior to the 1973 judicial fiat. Some states, like California and New York, would have liberal abortion laws, while other states may be more restrictive. That sort of subsidiary jurisprudence sounds like small government conservatism.
Maybe Lahren's political science studies at UNLV did not adequately cover jurisprudence. She seems to think that it is unconstitutional for the Supreme Court to overrule bad precedent or is judicial activism. In his confirmation hearing to become Chief Justice in 2005, John Roberts noted that stare decisis does not hold as a legal precedent when a matter was wrongly decided. But in Tomi Lahren's legal logic, Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that overturned the Separate but Equal standard of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was just spitting on the Constitution too.
It is lamentable that Fox News turns to Tomi Lahren for legal analysis. In little more than a year, she has shifted her abortion rights advocacy from being premised on what she believes is small government conservatism to combating religious judicial activism. No wonder she burned her bridge at The Blaze TV for lacking intellectual integrity.
Some may want to consume pink slime perspectives because they are spicy tasty morsel temptations, but assuredly many leave the establishment when such dreck is seen on the television menu.
