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  Quin Hillyer: High court’s partial-birth decision was no landmark
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ContributorImperator 
Last EditedImperator  Jun 30, 2007 06:44am
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News DateFriday, June 22, 2007 12:00:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionWASHINGTON (Map, News) - America’s socio-political left is up in arms about the Supreme Court’s April 18 decision to uphold a ban on partial-birth abortions. Conservatives are pleased with the case but consider it somewhat small potatoes.

How can one side claim to have suffered a big defeat while the other claims only a small victory? The answer lies in the differences between how the left and the right approach the entire concept of constitutional law.

First, some background: The April decision, Gonzales v. Carhart, was the first time since 1973’s Roe v. Wade case that the high court upheld a significant legislative restriction on abortion.

The left was apoplectic. At a June 14 forum at the National Press Club, Planned Parenthood lawyer Eve Gartner called the decision “radical” and “troubling,” and fumed that it came about due to “the moral code of five members of the Supreme Court in 2007.”

Conservative Ed Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, took strong exception to the latter remark. He said the justices were not applying their own moral code but deferring to the democratically elected Congress. And that’s good, he said: “We need to have abortion restored to the democratic processes.”

In a nutshell, that exchange encapsulates the whole court debate between left and right. The left sees judges as independent moral actors who lay down the law based on what they think will be best for society. The right sees jurists as officials constrained by the actions of legislatures, or of the people as a whole acting through the democratically ratified Constitution.
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