Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader read over the Smallholder’s post below and has read over a number of news stories on the recent Carhart decision. He will be first to admit that he has not read the whole opinion (as he just hasn’t had time - he’ll get to it - promise).

Your Maximum Leader does think that the Pro-life movement can legitimately claim a small victory in this case. They have advanced their cause (however slightly) and moved the direction of the discussion in their direction. Now, your Maximum Leader will tenatively concur with the Smallholder’s assesment that the right to an abortion found in Roe and Casey was upheld. (Tenative until he finishes reading the opinion.) What we have in Carhart is the finding of a reasonable restriction on that right. (A right however emanating (sp?) from whatever ill-concieved penumbra.)

Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure how one could spin this as anything other than a victory. This battle is not one that will be won or decided in a single action. In an ongoing “battle” for moving a society and culture in a particular direction, this is just one small episode. The hardcore Pro-choice side of this argument is lamenting this small chink in their position. Sure the partial birth abortion is a savage, and rarely performed, procedure. But once you start accepting reasonable restrictions, there is no telling where you may end…

Is this beginning to sound familiar? Do we hear the sloshing of society approaching a slippery slope? Certainly we are for the Pro-choice forces. (Just as any gun control measure is a step towards the slippery slope of gun bans for the ardent supporters of the 2nd Amendment; or just as civil unions are a step towards polygamy to those opposed to gay marriage.) Once you find a particularly eggregious procedure to ban, the next procedure doesn’t have to be quite as eggregious as the first. At least that is what the Pro-choicers would tell you.

While your Maximum Leader wouldn’t characterize the new justices on the court as “precedent monkeys” (although the term has a certain ring); they do have to respect precedent. Additionally, they also have to work with the cases they get. From what your Maximum Leader knows (and he will learn more as we go along here) this didn’t seem like a case that would lead to a wholesale revisitation of Roe or Casey. Indeed, he doesn’t think that there is such a case out there. Cases that court will hear will involve what are reasonable limitations to abortion. Those limitations might become more and more sweeping, but the kernel at the heart of Roe is unlikely to be overturned outright.

Carry on.