Sunday News and Views: The Week That Changed Everything?

Warren Hern of Boulder, CO: Is he the last abortionist?

Good Morning Conflucians!!!

It has been quite a week in U.S. politics. So far, it doesn’t seem to have registered with the DC Dems that everything has changed. We can only hope that they will slowly wake up to the new realities in time to prevent the Republicans from completely taking over Congress and the White House in the 2010 and 2012 elections.

With all the upheaval over the Scott Brown’s defeat of Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts special election for the Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy, we at TC barely took note of the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade on Friday. Maybe that is because quite a few of us believe that Roe will soon either be overturned completely or that abortion will effectively become unavailable to many women because of the anti-abortion language in the health insurance bill.

Politico talked to some pro-choice activists who are feeling very negative about Roe’s chances in the light of this week’s SCOTUS decision that allows corporations to make unlimited contributions to political candidates.

The Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday overturning a ban on corporate political spending that had been in place for more than a century has left abortion-rights supporters jittery that the justices could be similarly prepared to upend the landmark Roe v. Wade decision the court handed down 37 years ago this week.

“Yesterday’s Roberts court decision, which exhibited a stunning disregard for settled law of decades’ standing, is terrifying to those of us who care deeply about the constitutional protections the court put in place for women’s access to abortion,” said Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “We are deeply concerned. … Yesterday’s decision shows the court will reach out to take an opportunity to wholesale reverse a precedent the hard right has never liked.”

“It is worrisome beyond the direct impact of yesterday’s ruling on election law,” said, Jessica Arons, the director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress. “It’s certainly cause for concern.”

At the Guardian UK, there is a very disturbing interview with “The Last Abortionist.”

Warren Hern is no ordinary doctor. He has lived under siege for 25 years, and seen eight of his colleagues assassinated. Even some of his own patients want him dead. John H Richardson meets the last late-term abortionist in America

Here is a sample of what Hern had to say to Richardson:

“People don’t get it,” he says. “After eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 406 death threats, 179 assaults, and four kidnappings, people are still in denial. They say, ‘Well, this was just some wingnut guy who just decided to go blow up somebody.’ Wrong. This was a cold-blooded, brutal, political assassination that is the logical consequence of 35 years of hate speech and incitement to violence by people from the highest levels of American society, including but in no way limited to George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, Bill O’Reilly, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Reagan may not have been a fascist, but he was a tool of the fascists. Bush was most certainly a tool of the fascists. They use this issue to get power. They seem civilised, but underneath you have this seething mass of rabid anger and hatred of freedom that is really frightening, and they support people like the guy who shot George – they’re all pretending to be upset, issuing statements about how much they deplore violence, but it’s just bullshit. This is exactly what they wanted to happen.”