Don't let this one fall down the memory hole

I'm going to assume none of you are reading this until at least Monday because, face it, SoR just isn't as interesting as the alcohol-fueled tragicomedy which is your own family.

That's why it's important you go back and read this:

Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote in a June 1985 memo that the ruling that legalized abortion should be overturned [....]

I know, I know, not surprising at all. But check this shit out:

"While abortion involves essentially the same medical choice as other surgery, it involves in addition a moral choice, because the woman contemplating a first trimester abortion is given absolute and unreviewable authority over the future of the fetus," Alito wrote. "Should not then the woman be given relevant and objective information bearing on this choice? Roe took from the state lawmakers the authority to make this choice and gave it to the pregnant woman. Does it not follow that the woman contemplating abortion have at her disposal at least some of the same sort of information that we would want lawmakers to consider?"

Now, you could try to shrug this off by talking about context, but still, what's the point of view he's articulating here? That the pregnant woman's body should rightfully be under the control of the state; or, failing that, the state has the authority to do everything it can to convince her to make the 'right' decision. The bullshit about making sure she's 'informed' is an infantilizing smokescreen, assuming that a woman is incapable of deciding for herself when she fully understands all her options. Are there any other circumstances where the law pretends to know better than patients and doctors about how medical decisions should be made?

Keep this in mind when Alito's hearings start up next month. We're going to see an absolute explosion of 'won't let his personal views influence his legal opinions' crap, but it's clear he didn't think that way twenty years ago.

Oh yeah, Happy Holidays and all that.