Via Digby I see this 1987 interview between Bill Moyers and Harry Blackmun, former Supreme Court Justice and author of Roe v. Wade. One thing to understand about Blackmun is that despite whatever assumptions you might have about his politics, he was actually something much rarer than an activist lefty: a moderate-to-liberal Republican. Appointed by Nixon, no less! (Although, it should be said, questions as to whether or not Blackmun was palling around with Bill Ayers while writing Roe have gone ominously unanswered.)
Blackmun’s most famous decision has caught a lot of flack, not just from the Right, which is to be expected, but from ostensible non-conservatives too. The short version of the left-of-center critique is that Roe is good policy and even better ethics—but it’s bad ConLaw. Anyway, be sure to make it to the end of the video with that tension in mind.
“…this decision, the opinion you wrote, exploded in the public consciousness like a bomb going off in the middle of a market.”
They don’t teach that in j-school anymore.
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