I am happy the conservative Supreme Court ruled that DOMA is unconstitutional and the Prop 8 proponents have no legal standing thus invalidating Prop 8. I think that the ruling about legal standing is particularly interesting. This is what legal standing means:

The legal right to initiate a lawsuit. To do so, a person must be sufficiently affected by the matter at hand, and there must be a case or controversy that can be resolved by legal action. There are three requirements for Article III standing: (1) injury in fact, which means an invasion of a legally protected interest that is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical; (2) a causal relationship between the injury and the challenged conduct, which means that the injury fairly can be traced to the challenged action of the defendant, and has not resulted from the independent action of some third party not before the court; and (3) a likelihood that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision, which means that the prospect of obtaining relief from the injury as a result of a favorable ruling is not too speculative.[Link]

For me, what this signals is that a certain old line conservative ideal is STILL legally valid and in line with the Constitution. Older conservatives stood solidly on the side of individualism. In particular, they thought that an individual’s religion and morality was not something that should be thrust into law. These values were private and not a valid concern of jurisprudence. The proponents of Prop 8 were not damaged by gay marriage. Therefore, they had no constitutional or legal right to defend the law. Think about it, legal standing, the right to bring a law suit to the courts, is not valid if you have not been harmed…and this from a conservative court. This is very important when you consider other issues that the nuevo right is trying to legislate. One issue that comes to mind is abortion.

Roe v. Wade is the definitive law of the land on abortion. The case made abortion legal. Subsequent rulings have supported this and Chief Justice Roberts, a conservative justice and appointed by George W. Bush, has stated that “Roe is the settled law of the land”.[link] Here is a brief background of the suit:

“Roe v. Wade (1973) ruled unconstitutional a state law that banned abortions except to save the life of the mother. The Court ruled that the states were forbidden from outlawing or regulating any aspect of abortion performed during the first trimester of pregnancy, could only enact abortion regulations reasonably related to maternal health in the second and third trimesters, and could enact abortion laws protecting the life of the fetus only in the third trimester. Even then, an exception had to be made to protect the life of the mother.”[link]

I would highly recommend that if you have never read the Roe v. Wade decision you should read it. It is a well reasoned argument and not necessarily one-sided on this issue. This is Section X of the decision:

In view of all this, we do not agree that, by adopting one theory of life, Texas may override the rights of the pregnant woman that are at stake. We repeat, however, that the State does have an important and legitimate interest in preserving and protecting the health of the pregnant woman, whether she be a resident of the State or a nonresident who seeks medical consultation and treatment there, and that it has still another important and legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human life. These interests are separate and distinct. Each grows in substantiality as the woman approaches [410 U.S. 113, 163] term and, at a point during pregnancy, each becomes “compelling.”

With respect to the State’s important and legitimate interest in the health of the mother, the “compelling” point, in the light of present medical knowledge, is at approximately the end of the first trimester. This is so because of the now-established medical fact, referred to above at 149, that until the end of the first trimester mortality in abortion may be less than mortality in normal childbirth. It follows that, from and after this point, a State may regulate the abortion procedure to the extent that the regulation reasonably relates to the preservation and protection of maternal health. Examples of permissible state regulation in this area are requirements as to the qualifications of the person who is to perform the abortion; as to the licensure of that person; as to the facility in which the procedure is to be performed, that is, whether it must be a hospital or may be a clinic or some other place of less-than-hospital status; as to the licensing of the facility; and the like.

This means, on the other hand, that, for the period of pregnancy prior to this “compelling” point, the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without regulation by the State, that, in his medical judgment, the patient’s pregnancy should be terminated. If that decision is reached, the judgment may be effectuated by an abortion free of interference by the State.

With respect to the State’s important and legitimate interest in potential life, the “compelling” point is at viability. This is so because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother’s womb. State regulation protective of fetal life after viability thus has both logical and biological justifications. If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion [410 U.S. 113, 164] during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.

Measured against these standards, Art. 1196 of the Texas Penal Code, in restricting legal abortions to those “procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother,” sweeps too broadly. The statute makes no distinction between abortions performed early in pregnancy and those performed later, and it limits to a single reason, “saving” the mother’s life, the legal justification for the procedure. The statute, therefore, cannot survive the constitutional attack made upon it here.

This conclusion makes it unnecessary for us to consider the additional challenge to the Texas statute asserted on grounds of vagueness. See United States v. Vuitch, 402 U.S., at 67 -72. [link]

Roe had legal standing to challenge the case that she could not have an abortion according to Texas. The court affirmed that she could make a decision to terminate her pregnancy. It also gave the state some discretion to regulate abortion clinics for acceptable health standards but not to use this to effectively ban abortion. It found that the 14^th Amendment did not apply to a fetus. It further stated that Texas’ insistence at the time that abortion could be performed to protect the life of the mother contradicted their insistence that human life begins at conception and therefore acquires protection under the 14^th Amendment. Further, the decision states:

Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer. [410 U.S. 113, 160] [link, Section IX]

It further stated that during the third trimester the state could ban abortion except in the case of saving the life of the mother. Even at this point, the mother can still trump the state and have an abortion according to the court. The court did not explicitly rule about the life of the fetus and when or if a fetus has protection under the law. However, it did state that “we do not agree that, by adopting one theory of life, Texas may override the rights of the pregnant woman that are at stake”. Therefore, the court understood that the theory about a fetus being a human life IS a theory. It did grant the state some discretion to regulate abortion in the third trimester but it did not do so on the basis of when human life begins. This is important because anti-abortion folks would like to claim damage on behalf of the fetus on the basis that it is a human life which cannot bring the suit itself and thus attain legal standing. There is precedence to allow others to bring suit to the court with legal standing for incapacitated individuals. In any case, if the fetus was considered to be a human life at conception and therefore a citizen, the mother would have no right to terminate the pregnancy. However, even on the third trimester when the state could ban abortions, the Supreme Court and Texas would not go so far as to suggest the mother has no right to terminate the pregnancy when her life is at stake. This means the absolute right of the 14^th Amendment is not applicable at conception or any time during the pregnancy. In effect, any time during pregnancy the embryo has no legal standing. That is it; end of discussion, the matter is settled from a constitutional point of view.

The reason this is important in today’s Supreme Court decision is because the court has repeatedly affirmed the idea that people’s moralities and religious theories have no constitutional basis for imposing those views on others. The criterion for legal standing is recognized when the “the prospect of obtaining relief from the injury as a result of a favorable ruling is not too speculative”. Since Roe v. Wade legal abortion is the law of the land. When ‘life begins’ has been deemed a “theory of life”. The court made the point that Roe was certainly a human life and, as such, she could not be denied her right to decide definitively and absolutely for the first two trimesters. When the nuevo right insists on fighting a ruling that is legally decided, to ban all abortion, without legal standing they forcefully and unconstitutionally try to impose their values on the rest of us. No matter how much they insist on the validity of their cause they cannot overcome the fact that nearly 80% of Americans have consistently, since 1976, believed abortion should NOT be made illegal under any circumstances.[link] When Republicans want to re-litigate a settled issue they only alienate voters.

The Supreme Court’s decision today is another case where Republicans have only alienated possible supporters by stubbornly and insistently imposing their moral beliefs on others. These folks have no legal standing. Furthermore, when they stand in the way of immigration reform and civil rights they nail the lid shut on their political coffin. It really is their own doing as they have catered to the fundamentalist Christians, Fox News and radical right hysteria for years and now those same ones are dragging their party towards oblivion. It is finally time for them to pay the piper. They have sealed their doom by redistricting rural areas in the U.S. to guarantee the far right can obstruct and perpetually try to impose their “morality” on the rest of us without democratic repercussions. Ultimately, I think their demise will be good for them. They will eventually emerge as a party that is more respectful of diversity, moderate on social issues and skeptical of legislating their personal convictions just as the older conservatives have always been.