The following appeared July 10 on LifeSiteNews.com.
Court Justice Antonin Scalia defended his faith in the Constitution and the Catholic Church in an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan last night.
Scalia faced probing questions about how a pro-life Catholic could adhere to the U.S. Constitution during a prerecorded interview on Piers Morgan Tonight. The justice stated a woman’s inviolable right to have abortion “is simply not in the Constitution.”
The British-born Morgan pursued the strict constructionist justice about abortion over the course of a series of questions.
Morgan asked Scalia why he was “so violently opposed” to Roe v. Wade.
“I wouldn’t say violently,” the justice said placidly. “I’m a peaceful man. You mean adamantly opposed.”
Scalia said the case was badly decided, because “the Constitution says nothing about” abortion.
“My view is that regardless of whether you think prohibiting abortion is good or whether you think prohibiting abortion is bad – regardless of how you come out on that – my only point is the Constitution does not say anything about it,” Scalia stated. “It leaves it up to democratic choice. Some states prohibited it and some states didn’t. What Roe v. Wade said was that no state can prohibit it.”
He added the theory of substantive due process, which influenced the opinion, is “simply a lie.”
Piers Morgan went on to question whether Scalia’s faith improperly influenced his interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.
“Clearly, as a conservative Catholic, you’re going to be fundamentally against abortion,” he noted. “How do you, as a conservative Catholic, how do you not bring your personal sense of what is right and wrong to that kind of decision?”
“Regardless of what my views as a Catholic are, the Constitution says nothing about it,” Scalia replied.
Scalia said he believes, “The Constitution, in fact, says nothing at all about the subject.”
“Just as the pro-choice people say the Constitution prohibits the banning of abortion, so also the pro-life people say…that the Constitution requires the banning of abortion, because you’re depriving someone of life without due process of law,” he said. “I reject that argument just as I reject the other one. It is left to democratic choice.”
To read the entire story, click here.
To see a video clip of the interview, click here.
“It is left to democratic choice”: The Church is meant by God to influence the “democratic choice”. If the bishops all were holy, as the Pope recently commanded them to become, then the democratic choice would outlaw abortion.
If all Christians, especially us Roman Catholics were Holy as Jesus commanded us to be, this country would not be facing the promise in Isaiah 13:6-13 called the Day of The Lord, of which, will not be a happy day for all of us that are not in the Will of God. Read it and tremble with fear for all of those that will suffer the most. +JMJ+
If the Knights of Columbus would stop their State and Supreme “Leaders” from prohibiting the enforcement of their own Constitution Article 162-7 that calls for the expulsion of any member who brings scandal upon the Knights of Columbus, things may be different as well.
Apparently being pro-abortion and pro-sodomite, in the eyes of some State “leaders” and the Supreme Offices is not bringing scandal on the Knights but bringing attention to the FACT that Councils and Districts, and even some States, have been restricted in enforcing their own Constitution and By-Laws is because they have expelled REAL KNIGHTS who did so.
CRCOA, Inc. will once again be demonstrating outside the Anaheim Hilton Hotel on the public grounds from 9:30 AM to around 6:00 PM to try to get the Knights to do what is RIGHT and stop their State and Supreme Offices interference in these grave matters. ALL pro-life, pro-family advocates are invited to join us.
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
Forgot to mention the dates of the demonstrations, they are August 7 – 9!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
newsflash to JLS: the american bishops all voted to become holy, after reading your countless posts on the subject!
now the pope has a new command: all the posters in here are to become holy…
The Catholic Church is the one, true Church founded by Christ. As such, the Catholic Church, as a general matter, is involved in “influencing” the practice of civil voting, that is, insofar, and primarily insofar, as her articulation of voting ethics helps inform the act of voting by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. It is in this sense, JLS, that the Church speaks to the collective practice of civil voting. Your error, JLS, is to scapegoat the bishops on your purported ground that they are not holy (here you’ve completely misread Pope Benedict’s address to bishops as indeed and indeed a call to holiness). To scapegoat bishops as a compensatory mechanism for lack of lay lack of success in a sphere that sounds, in a fundamental way, in the domain of lay responsibility, is as warrantless as it is unseemly. Equally warrantless is your endorsement of Justice Scalia’s ill-considered judgment that “the Constitution says nothing about abortion.” The Personeity/Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment contradicts Justice Scalia’s state-prerogativist denial of the personeity of a subset of living human beings, n That Clause reads: “nor shall any state deprive any PERSON of the right to LIFE, liberty, and property, without due process of law.” Justice Scalia, I am sorrry to say, blinks way the question of the juridical personeity of preborn infants as a matter of Constitutional law. Viewed from this perspective, Justice Scalia — this is tragic — concurs in the HOLDING of Roe v. Wade, namely, that the preborn infant is not a juridically cognizable person under the Constitution.
Mercy me! The Catholic “poster Justice” appears to have a few warts. As a strict constructionist, what would you have expected him to say? Would you buy any “penumbra” argument that he would have made? Or would his pushing for a theocracy been more to your liking?
The idea that YOU know how to interpret the Constitution and he doesn’t is, at best, laughable.
Roe & Doe are not the law of the land, because law is made by legislatures and enforced by the executive. In 1973 abortion wasn’t anywhere on the political radar, except in the chambers the Ford & Population foundations. (In Betty Friedan’s 1963 “classic” work “The Feminine Mystique”, the word “abortion” is not even mentioned.) Roe & Doe were an end run using a tactic called ” the litigation campaign”. This scenario was set up by the fact that as late as the 1950s the legislature was perpetually remiss in failing to render justice to African-Americans. “Old Man River” Paul Robeson was running around “Uncle Joe” Stalin’s Russia giving America a black eye, so the de facto executive of America’s 60 ruling families dictated that if the government wouldn’t act, there would be a functional revolution (Brown v Board of Education Topeka 1954). So we sold ourselves down the river as slaves to an unelected judicial elite. Rather than SCOTUS rulings closely regulating every facet of daily life, originally, Congress and the President interpreted the Constitution, and the Court’s constitutional interpretations were largely confined to matters concerning its own operations. (Judicial historian Robert Lowry Clinton, “How the Court Became Supreme”, First Things, January 1999.) Even though Justice Scalia savors a conservative flavor of judicial supremacy, he, as much as Chief Justice Roberts, is completely part of our system of civil slavery, feted in his own right by the Washington elites.
It hardly took Paul Robeson to give Jim Crow America a black eye, and the notion that Brown vs. Board of Education was the first ruling to be unconfined to “its own operations” (whatever that means) is fanciful at best. Beyond the obvious impact of Marberry vs. Madison there are many, many others throughout history.
Paul Robeson friend and admirer of Joe Stalin
Nixon could have stood up like a man and refused to enforce Roe. If fact, it was his constitutional duty to do so. But he believed in abortion for “miscegeny”, for offspring of marriages between members of “different races”. (The facts of biology obliterate this view: If God hadn’t enabled people of different ethnicities to procreate, their offspring would be sterile like those of mammals with different numbers of chromosomes.)
Catholic Court Justice Antonin Scalia lives the words, “Be not afraid!”
If I could ask Justice Scalia, I would want to know why he throws out the due process claim? The declaration declares that all of us are endowed with the “right to life.” So if science shows that the zygote is a human life (hard to argue in light of babies starting in petri dishes) why isn’t that human life protected by due process?
Of course the Declaration of Independence is a revolutionary tract, not a legal document. But pre-Roe, murder and abortion were prosecuted under different penal codes, addressing them as if they are equivalent is a non-traditional position.
excellent question, MARY ANN!
Good point, Mary Ann.
Thanks to “charlio” for disecting the history here. There is always “a precipatating event,” a lack of the exercise of justice and charity, which, mishandled, misinterpreted, sets off a chain of events which are neigh unto impossible to rescind by human efforts. An excellent interpretation of this, of history is Brad Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation. Read it and weep.
I too, along with Mary Ann Kreitzer, do not understand Justice Scalia’s reasoning. Either unborn life is human or it is not. If it is human it is characterized by the Imago Dei. If it is not human, then I intepret Scalia to say, it is not “meaningfully” human, the philosophy of the Nazis. So Scalia wants the people to decide the issue. Sounds like Pilate to me , washing his hands and asking the people to decide our Lord’s fate. I have to take issue with Joel Fago on this one: Scalia avoided standing on principle when he had a perfect opportunity to do so.
Justice Scalia’s AGREEMENT with the holding of the _Roe_ Court that preborn infants are not persons under the Constitution, not only blinks away the Personeity/Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, it blinks away the bearing of the Declaration of Independence on the question of inclusive protection of all living human beings as cognizable persons under fundamental law. Indeed, it is for this and just this reason that Douglas Kmiec has urged the Supreme Court to revisit the question of the personeity of preborn infants in light of the Organic Law of the United States, that is, in light of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. At issue here is SPECIES-EQUALITY. In the language of the Declaration, “We hold…that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….”). To those who think, along with Justice Scalia, that the 1973 _Roe_ holding is correct that preborn infants are not persons as a matter of fundamental law, Wanda Franz, for her part, has replied forthrightly: To the contrary, it is NOT the _Roe_ Court’s holding that has rare precedential force but rather the Declaration of Independence, and just this Declaration, that is “entitled to rare precedential force, despite [the Supreme Court’s,] that eminent tribunal’s effort to thwart its implementation.” Wanda Franz, “The Unalienable Right to Life and the Consent of the Governed,” _National Right to Life News_, vol. 23, no. 8
(August 2006).
Everyone needs to see “ENDOWMENT for HUMAN DEVELOPMENT” on the internet. And pass the link on to others. It is not a religious site but an educational site. It clearly proves that these are human babies, not puppies or kittens or a blob of tissue. ABORTION is merely MURDER for CONVENIENCE, and should be called just that. When somone says they are pro-choice they should be told that means they believe in “murder for convenience”.
Charlio and Brian S. it is interesting that you mention the name Paul Robeson. I am reading a book called The Communist by Paul Kengor,Ph.D. mentions him being friends with Frank Marshall Davis. Frank Marshall Davis also a known Communist and on the FBI list was President Obama’s mentor while he lived in Hawaii.
Frank Davis was only Obama’s mentor? Gosh, I thought he was his Dad….
He was a card carrying communist which I am sure does not bother you in least…
I cannot stand Piers Morgan. His interpretation of most everything is “off the wall”, and he puts words in people’s mouths without giving them much of a chance to answer most of the time. To say that the Founding Fathers did not have women about whom they cared is just incredibly obnoxious. How does he know? Was he there?
I should not have said that I cannot stand Piers Morgan as I guess the man does have some good qualitites, but he angers me since quite often he does not let his guests fully answer the questions if he does not agree with them. It seems to be a common trait of many talk show hosts.