Rage over the pending reversal of Roe reveals the coercive character of the left

The abortion battle goes to the heart of a democratic republic and highlights a dark side of human nature.

Abortion activists for nearly half a century have relied upon the Supreme Court to silence the opposition, coerce the country and block all efforts to stanch the bloodshed of 60 million innocents. Their tyrannical rage exploded after a leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson signaled the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision, returning the issue to democratic debate and constitutional federalism.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer immediately invoked biblical language in a scathing statement: "The Republican-appointed Justices’ reported votes to overturn Roe v. Wade would go down as an abomination…."

The pro-abortion group Ruth Sent Us proclaimed, "We’ll be burning the Eucharist to show our disgust for the abuse Catholic Churches have condoned for centuries."

In Los Angeles, the AP reported violence against police patrolling a pro-abortion demonstration: "[D]emonstrators threw rocks and bottles at officers."

In Portland, Antifa reportedly "destroyed property and started fires in Portland last night at their pro-abortion direct action riot."

Just days after the draft opinion was leaked, Madison.com reported, "Vandals set a fire inside the Madison headquarters of the anti-abortion group Wisconsin Family Action."

Why such inflammatory rhetoric and violent protest from the left? Because the Court will no longer enforce their agenda through coercion, instead returning power to the people for democratic debate and decisions.

As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the leaked first draft of a majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson, "For the first 185 years after the adoption of the Constitution, each State was permitted to address this issue in accordance with the views of its citizens. Then, in 1973, this Court decided Roe v. Wade. Even though the Constitution makes no mention of abortion, the Court held that it confers a broad right to obtain one.

Alito lamented, "In the years prior to that decision, about a third of the States had liberalized their laws, but Roe abruptly ended that political process. It imposed the same highly restrictive regime on the entire Nation, and it effectively struck down the abortion laws of every single State. As Justice Byron White aptly put it in his dissent, the decision represented the 'exercise of raw judicial power,' and it sparked a national controversy that has embittered our political culture for a half-century."

The current Court appears poised to make a profound course correction.

As Alito underscored in his draft, "It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives."

That prospect terrifies the left, which realizes that many of its radical positions will never stand the test of free and open democratic debate.

In an outburst of risible irony, the perpetually apoplectic Senator Elizabeth Warren protested, "What I feel angry about is that an extremist Supreme Court is going to impose their views on the rest of America."

Warren's words describe precisely what Roe has done for the past half century. The current Court is returning the issue to the states to end the Court's imposition of its views on the "rest of America," who now will decide abortion by voting.

Many abortion activists have bought into the "self-empowerment" propaganda that personal or professional advancement somehow requires a right to kill unborn babies.

A leading pro-abortion activist protesting outside the Supreme Court summed up this prevalent view of abortion: "It is essential for social, economic, and racial equality in this country. Simply put, abortion bans are racist."

Yet the facts suggest exactly the opposite.

While black women number just 13 percent of the U.S. population, the CDC reports that black babies account for over a third (34 percent) of abortion deaths. Abortion thus disproportionately decreases the black population, fulfilling the eugenic vision of Planned Parenthood founder, the racist Margaret Sanger.

Other abortion activists are convinced that the "radical religious right" or simply men in general, are hell-bent on casting them into a Handmaid's Tale dystopia. Yet while imagining conservative coercion, they endorse actual liberal coercion, such as firing professors over biology-contradicting pronouns or forcing Christian artists to create anti-Christian messages.

Still others see abortion as an essential weapon of autonomy and a pillar of women's rights.

Vice President Kamala Harris warned against "weaponizing the use of Roe v. Wade against women. The rights of all Americans are at risk. This is the time to fight for women and our country with everything we have."

Caroline Reilly of Rewire asserted, "[W]e need to outright reject the idea that a governing body ever had the right to tell us our bodies were their jurisdiction."

Ideology alone, however, cannot explain fully the intensity of the anaphylactic reaction to the overturning of abortion on demand. Something even deeper, in human nature, may help explain the depth of the rage.

A dark, self-destructive side of human nature whispers to us that freedom means getting whatever we want, regardless of the cost to other human beings. Driven toward radical autonomy, we neither contemplate nor care that a society cannot survive such a ruthless ethic. Nor do we comprehend that radical autonomy eventually will subject us to domination--by someone stronger than we, at the very moment that our own autonomy conflicts with that person's autonomy.

Joe Biden revealed his ignorance of this danger when he asserted that "there's been a consensus among scholars and the American people on a reading to the Constitution that protects the right of privacy, the autonomy of individuals, while at the same time empowering the federal government to protect the less powerful."

Biden made that statement in 2006, during a Senate hearing on the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito, author of the recently leaked draft opinion in Dobbs.

Thankfully, Alito and other Constitution-hewing justices understand the coercive consequences of radical autonomy. They also realize that the government since Roe has failed to protect the least powerful of all human beings.

A decision to overturn Roe will return to the people and to the states the power to protect the unborn. The American people will reengage in the democratic process as reason and debate replace judicial fiat and coercion.

No political process, however, can transform the destructive selfishness of the human heart. Such transformation requires divine intervention.