Good Riddance to Sandra Day O’Connor
Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980 with much help from pro-lifers. They expected him to appoint U.S. Supreme Court justices who would overturn the anti-constitutional Roe v. Wade decision, which had aborted all state laws, including those that had legalized abortion. It effectively imposed abortion-on-demand across the country.
Instead, Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor, who died on the day I write, age 93. That was 50 million dead babies ago.
It took until last year’s Dobbs decision finally to overturn Roe and its absurdities, allowing the states again to make their own laws. But by then it was too late, as abortion had become as much a part of the national culture as the Super Bowl. A recent study found births rose after Dobbs by only 32,000; all worthy of saving. But even where abortion was banned, it’s easy for troubled mothers to travel to a pro-abort state to delete their kids.
If you go to the Reagan Library in California, you will see an exhibit to O’Connor. Reagan took pride in her being the first female justice. Yet at the time I recall other female judges were recommended as being solid on pro-life. And conservative activist Howard Phillips warned Sandra was pro-abort.
She was terrible on other issues as well. Like most modern justices, she based her decisions on her whims, then wrote legalese interspersed with quotes from the Constitution and previous decisions. Here are two on which she wrote the majority opinion.
Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff in 1984. The Wikipedia summary: It “was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that a state could use eminent domain to take land that was overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of private landowners and redistribute it to the wider population of private residents.”
This was a vast abuse of eminent domain, which is supposed to be used only for clear government purposes, such as building a police station or road. The property mostly was stolen from the Hawaiian Royal Family. That might have been more difficult nowadays with the increased obsession about race.
Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003 upheld the discrimination called affirmative action. Which supposedly was not allowed by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Which specified, “It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employment agency to fail or refuse to refer for employment, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, or to classify or refer for employment any individual on the basis of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”
At the time gabby Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota pledged he would “eat my hat” if that led to affirmative action. He never got indigestion. Affirmative action was imposed by President Nixon after he was elected in 1969.
On the positive side of O’Conner’s decision, she said affirmative action might be needed for at most another 25 years. Or 2028. Three years early – close enough for government work – that limit was quoted in last June’s Harvard case, which finally banned affirmative action; which Harvard and the University of North Carolina had used to severely limit the admittance of Asian students.. But many of the racial problems of recent years could have been avoided if O’Conner had taken the right path in 2003.
In sum, she was a terrible justice who distorted the Constitution and led to death, discrimination and destruction.