Abortion is an intensely emotional issue. For people like me, it’s a matter of genuine religious conviction that we protect innocent life as understood in natural law. For others it’s a presumed Constitutional right. I say “presumed” because there has been much debate on whether or not abortion is a right per se secured under the Constitution of the United States. Nowhere in the Constitution does the word “abortion” appear as an enumerated right. Indeed, it isn’t even implied. Those who maintain that abortion is a right rely on Roe v. Wade (1973) that created a right for a woman to abort a baby and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) that stood behind the judicially created right found in Roe.            

If you are an originalist who relies on the plain reading of the Constitution and the meaning the Founders assigned to it, you would likely conclude that both Roe and Casey were poorly decided precedents, creating a right out of whole cloth. On the other hand, if you are a post-modern liberal, you might say the Constitution is a living document and means whatever the latest court decision says it means. I am indefatigably opposed to that view. But I digress. Suffice it to say that there’s much to debate on abortion.            

Much of that debate occurs in State legislatures, like the one I served in for 16 years. And in the most recent debate in Mississippi, the legislature there passed a law banning abortion after 15 weeks in the mother’s womb. That law is being contested in the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. A decision in that case has been forecasted as one that will overturn both Roe and Casey and hand the abortion issue back to the states to establish the law governing abortion, just as was the case prior to 1973.           

Liberals are anxious that the conservative SCOTUS majority will affirm that abortion is a state prerogative, not a federal one, in large measure because the Constitution is completely silent on that matter. That decision will occur this summer, prior to the November election and is sure to enliven people on both sides of the abortion debate. So why did someone—likely a clerk to one of the SCOTUS justices—prematurely leak in May a draft decision written last February by Associate Justice Sam Alito overturning Roe and Casey when it would be made public in July?           

There is only one clear conclusion that can be drawn from this act. A person inside the court dishonored the Court’s deliberative confidentiality to influence the justices. That person has done great harm to the institution of SCOTUS in an effort to secure two extra months in the political calendar to whip up passions around abortion to help those who favor abortion in the November elections. In a manner, they’ve tampered with the jury.           

Anywhere outside of SCOTUS, a person who tampers with a jury in an attempt to interfere with the deliberations of a trial jury has committed a felony. Practically speaking, that is what has occurred by a dishonorable person inside SCOTUS. That person should be exposed, fired, and disbarred if they are a lawyer. We should have only loathing for such a person who would put political gain above respecting an institution we all value.           

Some who are outraged that the Court might overturn Roe and Casey have been largely silent on the leaking of Alito’s draft. However, they’re quite fulsome in registering their rage over a decision that has yet to be rendered.           

One might wonder would they be equally outraged if the FBI were found to have attained a warrant to monitor a private citizen based on fraudulent evidence? Would they be enraged if an FBI agent were to falsify an email to use in attaining that warrant? Would they be enflamed if a lawyer for a Presidential political campaign went to the FBI with scurrilous evidence he knew was false and then lie to the FBI when asked whether he was representing that campaign when he was? In truth, those who are sounding the alarm over the possibility of overturning abortion have little concern about these other criminal matters. But if there was a situation where the jury was tampered with in a case they cared about, they would be quite upset.           

And that’s my point. The jury in Supreme Court cases are the justices themselves. They decide. Yet there is also another jury of review that observes the work of the high court. You and I are that jury. And when the deliberations of SCOTUS are corrupted by the selfish political motives of unconscionable people inside the court, they’re tampering with justice for every one of us as well.           

That is truly supreme jury tampering.

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