Loss of rights. For decades, American evangelical groups have educated a generation of jurists to infiltrate the courts and achieve rulings like the next one from the Supreme Court, which advocates annulling abortion
Faith is a powerful force that moves mountains. For Martin Luther King it was “taking the first step without seeing the whole ladder.” Only sometimes even God needs a catwalk.
Donald Trump descended for her in June 2015 on the arm of his wife, a model with the face of an angel who dressed in white. Christian fundamentalists are quick to identify symbols and signs of God on earth, but at first they had a hard time seeing the messiah in that adulterous reality TV mogul who appeared in the tabloids with Playboy bunnies. Until the year 2000, he defended the right to abortion as “a personal decision that should be left to women and their doctors”, but already in his book ‘The America We Deserve’ he explained that, although he continued to defend “the right of women to choose,” the medical procedure bothered him.
He was flirting for the second time with the presidential race and still did not know which way the winds were blowing. George W. Bush ended up winning the election twice, thanks to the Supreme Court and the 78% white evangelicals mobilized by his electoral architect, Karl Rove. By 2011 Trump had learned his lesson. In an interview with CBN’s David Brody, he said he reconsidered his position after hearing about the experience of a friend whose wife didn’t want another baby but he ended up having one. “And now it’s the light in her eyes,” he said. “So now I’m pro-life.”
It wasn’t exactly the story that would have moved the Christian right the most, but by the time the Republican primary came around, the author of ‘The Art of the Deal’ had learned the magic words. “Do you want to overturn Roe v. Wade (which legalized abortion at the federal level in 1973)?” moderator Chris Wallace asked him in a debate. “Well, if we put two or three judges on the Supreme Court, that’s what will happen automatically,” he predicted, “because I’m going to put pro-life judges. I can tell you that the issue will return to the states and they will be the ones who make the determination.
I was beginning to read the manual of the Federalist Society, a powerful conservative and libertarian group that began in 1982 as a forum for legal discussions to plant conservative values in law schools, and ended up being the most influential group in Washington. After deciding that the Reagan Revolution had not borne the fruit they sought, its leaders concluded that there were not enough candidates legally educated in the most radical values they defend to serve as a quarry. The goal was to transform the country from the courts. Today its more than 40,000 members “really decide the politics of this country,” says Amanda Hollis-Brusky, chair of the Department of Politics at Pomona University, and author of two books on “The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution.” ‘ and ‘The Christian Right’s Radical Struggle to Transform Law and Cultural Legacy’.
The 9 justices of the Supreme Court of the United States
1- Brett Kavanaugh (conservative, 56 years old)
Appointed by Trump. One of the five most conservative court judges in his ideology2-Elena Kagan (progressive, 62 years old)
In court since 2010, it remains one of the progressive bastions3-Neil Gorsuch (Conservative, 54 years old)
Appointed at the behest of Trump. Inspiring the right turn that the Supreme Court has given4-Amy Coney Barrett (Conservative, 50 years old)
The third of the judges appointed by Trump. Of ultra-Catholic ideology5-Samuel Alito (conservative, 72 years old)
Writer of the draft of the sentence that will abolish the right to abortion. In the position since 20066-Clarence Thomas (Conservative, 73 years old).
Second African American on the Court. Controversial. His wife was involved in the assault on the Capitol.7-John Roberts (Conservative, 67 years old)
The least radical of the conservatives. He has been a member of the court since 2005.8-Stephen Breyer (progressive, 83 years old)
Appointed by Clinton in 1994. In favor of abortion and same-sex marriage.9-Sonia Sotomayor (progressive, 67 years old).
Since 2009 working in court. Elected at the behest of Obama in 2009.
In a marriage of convenience, “the Christian right has infiltrated and changed the face of the Republican Party, which for many years was more corporate and anti-regulation, to focus since the mid-1990s on culture wars,” explains the expert. “Newt Gingrich (the former congressional speaker who presided over Bill Clinton’s impeachment over his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky) introduced the strategy of mobilizing more around outrage and against the government.” Abortion, same-sex marriages, immigration… The most divisive issues that are capable of stirring up tempers are also the most politically profitable.
Among the members of the conservative legal elite raised under the wing of the Federalist Society to transform the country in the image and likeness of Christian teachings are Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and, of course, all three of the new generation with which Trump has completed the conservative supermajority initiated by Bush to make his prophecy of abortion come true: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Six out of nine.
For the Pentecostal evangelical wing that Trump elevated to the highest positions on the ladder of power, the legalization of abortion in 1973 was a way of murdering children destined to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth. Like the Massacre of the Innocents with which King Herod tried to abort the arrival of the messiah announced by the wise men.
Three decisive judges
With the arrival of these last three judges to the Supreme Court, the fate of Roe vs. Wade was cast. “The only way to avoid it would have been to defeat Trump in 2016 or remove him with the first impeachment, as it should have happened,” laments Larry Tribe, one of the most prominent constitutional lawyers in the United States, professor emeritus at Harvard and co-founder of the American Constitution Society. “The project of the Trump administration was to nominate and confirm judges who would do exactly this: return control over the privacy, autonomy, dignity and bodily integrity of all human beings, particularly women, to political power.”
Beyond validating the Mississippi law that led to the occasion of annulling the sentence that protected abortion throughout the country, the legal opinion that Judge Samuel Alito has written on behalf of the majority of the court, as it has been leaked, opens the door to annul other social conquests of recent stamp that, like abortion, are not specifically protected by the Constitution of 1789 nor rooted in the tradition of the country. “I certainly see (judicial) attacks coming on transsexuals, gay marriages, contraceptives, the morning after pill… There are even politicians in some states arguing that they could make interracial marriages illegal,” Tribe warns.
Posts to predict, Hollis Brusky bets that if the fall of Roe vs. Wade is confirmed “we will see the states approve vetoes of homosexual marriages only to test the limits of Obergefell vs. Hodges”, the sentence that in 2015 legalized marriages homosexuals at the federal level.
For those who see from a distance the collapse of individual freedoms in the United States as another American eccentricity, the lawyer and professor Mary Ziegler, an expert in constitutional law and American conservatism, warns that her country is “the canary in the mine” that must serve warning to all. “It’s easy to say in Europe: wow, what’s up with those people? That could never happen here. And you know what? The Americans didn’t think it could happen here either. But I also did not think that Brexit could happen, or that Marine Le Pen could have so much support. If you live in Europe, wake up and realize that you have to do something, that you cannot fall asleep and take what you have for granted.
Amy Coney Barrett, the heroine of the evangelicals
More than faith, half a century ago, when the anti-abortion movement began, it would have taken a lot of optimism to believe that the fall of a judgment as capital as Roe vs. Wade would be possible. However, those who trust in faith are not afraid to move mountains. Some even know how to interpret the lines written by God. According to Lou Engle, leader of Charismatic Christianity of America, a Pentecostal organization that emphasizes miracles and the intercession of the Holy Spirit, Trump’s list for the Supreme Court had 25 candidates, “but God’s only one: Amy Coney Barrett.” .
Since her days at the University of Notre Dame, first as a law student and then as a professor, Trump’s latest Supreme Court appointee had caught the attention of the self-styled “prophets” of Dominion Theology, a term coined to describe the philosophy of politically active conservative Christians who attempt to infiltrate the civil government to establish a nation governed by Christians according to the teachings of the Bible.
For such a task it was necessary to unite all the Christians of the world, not only the evangelicals. Amy Coney Barrett grew up in a community of “intense faith” Catholics called the People of Praise, which would later spread nationwide. Here leaders were consulted on everything from marriage to the household budget, and her children had relationships only with other Christians “who were serious in the faith.” Barrett was the first of her class, graduated cum laude and possessed of a supernatural energy that has allowed her to combine her work with the upbringing of seven children -and show herself as an example that no pregnancy truncates a career-, two of them adopted and one own with Down syndrome.
Judge Anthony Scalía himself trained her before he died in the arts of the Supreme Court, by hiring her as his legal assistant. Serving as a vehicle for the Federalist Society Dominionists who promoted her, Trump first nominated her for a federal judge in 2017 and two years later, when she was just 48, made her the sixth Supreme Court conservative vote just a week before Joe Biden won the election, giving the Dominionists a supermajority capable of withstanding any weakness in court.
“Chief Judge John Roberts, who until now has avoided with his vote that the sentences were too extreme, has lost control,” says Amanda Hollis-Brusky, legal expert on the Supreme Court’s policies.
With the death of the legendary judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, champion of women, both in real life and in the movies, Coney Barnett’s opportunity came. After her candidacy to be the youngest justice of the Supreme Court, the state of Mississippi dared to request the annulment of Roe v. Wade. But Roe vs. Wade wasn’t the goal, it’s just the beginning.