Rest in peace, Justice Ginsburg- and any excuse for abortion alone to dictate one's vote for President

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died at the age of 87.

While I disagreed with Justice Ginsburg politically, she was by all accounts a fine and gracious lady who had a close personal friendship with the late, great Antonin Scalia despite their philosophical differences.

I have no doubt that President Trump will quickly nominate a successor and that the Republican majority in the Senate will quickly confirm him or her. If Roe v. Wade is ever going to be overturned by the Court, it surely will happen now that six of the nine justices will be pro-life conservatives.

I predict that it will not be. The principle of stare decisis ("it stands decided") will continue to prevail, and the addition of one more conservative vote to the Court will not change that. There is no longer any excuse for letting the illusory notion of the Court reversing itself on abortion to be the deciding factor in a pro-life voter's choice for the White House. The makeup of the Court is simply not going to become any more philosophically favorable for such a thing than it is now becoming, and it just isn't going to happen.

The fact of the matter is that Roe represents as close to a consensus on abortion as this country has. I wish that were not the case. I disagree profoundly with Roe, and I believe that the case was wrongly decided. But the Court is not going to change its position on the issue until the American people do. The efforts of the pro-life movement need to focus from here on out on changing hearts and minds, not on the fantasy of staging a judicial counter-coup and returning the matter to the states.

I agree with those who maintain that the value of every human life is foundational to any just society. But for too long abortion has so dominated our political discourse that other issues that are profoundly important for such a society have been subordinated to it, and cynical political leaders whose personal dedication to the sanctity of human life doesn't match that of those who have been active in the pro-life movement have been able to manipulate us by holding out the prospect of a change in the law being brought about by a pro-life Court. Well, the Court has a theoretically pro-life majority now, and it has had at least two chances since Justice Kavanaugh was confirmed to act on the matter. It has not done so.

The addition of a sixth pro-life justice, giving our side two-thirds of the Court's membership, is not going to change that. But if it somehow is going to do so, it's hard to see how the Court could be made any more philosophically compatible with such a move than it is about to become. The appointment and confirmation of Justice Ginsburg's successor will mark the end of any possible excuse for allowing a potential president's authority to appoint Supreme Court justices to dominate one's decision as to whether to vote for or against that candidate.

Pro-life Americans rather need to start focusing they way they have been played by a cynical administration that has been willing to use the issues of abortion and judicial activism to manipulate us while minimizing the threat of COVID-19, engineered the premature re-opening of businesses and institutions in states which had not reached the milestones laid out by the White House task force, seeks to discredit those who actually have credentials in medicine and in particular epidemiology while promoting misinformation and discredited treatments, discourages common-sense practices like social distancing and face-mask wearing in public, encourages selfish and irresponsible behavior that can only lead to the further spread of the virus, and thus not only displays utter contempt for the lives of the 40% or so of Americans for who COVID-19 is a lethal threat for reasons of age or underlying medical conditions but leaves little doubt of its utter hypocrisy when it comes to the value of human life.

The nation has cause to mourn the passing of Justice Ginsburg. That includes those of us who disagreed with her. But with her inevitable replacement by a sixth conservative, pro-life justice, there can no longer be any excuse for us to allow ourselves to be distracted by the illusion of a judicial solution to a crisis of hearts and minds, or manipulated by those who pretend to share our values.

ADDENDUM: This from The Bulwark.