Thomases' Apparent Corruption May Well Save Roe v Wade, Conservative Pundit Opines
It could come down to how justices approach review of new Mississippi abortion restrictions law
The web of deeply unseemly political corruption and sedition which Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife find themselves in, may well be — perversely —what ultimately saves the national right to abortion in the United States.
That's according to Bill Krystol, one-time chief of staff to former vice president Dan Quayle and a longtime conservative commentator and journalist.
Krystol laid out his fascinating theory in a lengthy thread on Twitter, as the high court is to weigh the constitutionality of a recent Mississippi state law imposing tight restrictions on the right to an abortion.
It, theoretically, even could become a vehicle for the Supreme Court’s 6-3 right-wing supermajority the opportunity even to strike down entirely Roe v Wade, the 1973 high court decision which first enshrined a national right to abortion.
However, with so much spotlight and negative press on Justice Thomas' potential corruption and malfeasance in office, the other members of the nation’s highest court — including conservatives Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — will want to go out of their way to maintain some air of nonpartisan credibility for the institution, Krystol posited.
It's been uncovered that Ginny Thomas, the justice's wife swapped many text messages with Donald Trump's White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, pushing him to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and try to install Trump in a second, illegal term as president.
Furthermore, Justice Thomas cast the lone vote in the case where Trump tried to block records being turned over to the House select committee investigating the events surrounding the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
That vote appears as though that it could have been a corrupt attempt to shield his wife's involvement in the insurrection.
“Won't Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett now be more open to the idea that the Court needs to husband its institutional credibility and preserve as broad public support as possible? Why risk overturning Roe when you can join [Chief Justice John] Roberts in a swing three-vote bloc that upholds [Mississippi's] 15 week limit (with I believe an exception later for the life of the mother)? This cuts away at Roe and gives a victory to the pro-life movement but a 15 week limit also keeps over 90% of current abortions legal, so it's a fairly pro-choice outcome in practice,” Krystol tweeted.
“[Chief Justice] Roberts would write the controlling middle-ground opinion for three justices, agreeing with the three conservatives that the [Mississippi] law stands and agreeing with the three liberals that Roe is not overturned and there remains a (more limited) right to an abortion,” he added.
Krystol conceded that the scenario he’s sketched isn't terribly elegant.
“But I do think as a matter of constitutional statesmanship, this might well be a good thing. We shouldn't underestimate how thin the ice would be under a Supreme Court that already looks very partisan and political, which gets rocked by the Ginny Thomas situation and then overturns Roe by a 5-4 vote.”
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