More pointless words have not been spoken since last Donald Trump opened his mouth.
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, prominent in the endangered species called a moderate Republican, said over the weekend that she would not support a Trump nominee for Anthony Kennedy’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court who was “hostile to Roe v. Wade,” meaning the right of a woman to choose abortion.
That was equal parts mumbo and jumbo.
Collins may as well have said she’d support no nominee who would serve on the court without wearing undergarments beneath his robe.
No nominee is going to testify that he intends to go commando on the bench, even if he in fact so intends. A nominee would tell a Senate inquisitor that the adornment or non-adornment of his private regions — indeed, all persons’ private regions — must remain private in our free society.
Ditto for Roe v. Wade. A nominee all-in to take away a woman’s right to abortion would tell a Senate questioner that he respects all existing case law but that he could not and should not pre-judge during the nomination process any case touching on a woman’s right to choose, or anything else, that might make its way through the federal courts to the highest one.
“Senator, I can’t await to become a Supreme Court judge and end all abortion” are words you won’t hear during Senate hearings, even if they are true words.
Collins told the media over the weekend, as if it was something worth telling, that she had advised the president of her aversion to a nominee hostile to Roe v. Wade and that Trump had assured her he did not intend to ask prospective nominees their views on the landmark case.
Was Collins saying that as if to suggest she believes Trump’s commitments to her? Still?
Surely, she understands that someone else could ask in Trump’s stead, or, more likely, the abortion-averse leanings of a nominee would be known by his or her rulings on abortion-related cases that had passed through whatever federal or district appellate court on which the nominee had served.
If all this sounds vaguely familiar, let me refresh your memory.
Collins, per usual, was a moderate holdout on the Republicans’ big tax-cut bill at the end of the year. She didn’t like that the bill repealed the tax penalty for not getting health insurance, starting this year. But she acquiesced and voted for the tax cut after Trump promised her that she would get separate votes on two bills to stabilize Obamacare — one restoring subsidies for low-income premiums that Trump had killed and another funding a re-insurance program to help insurance carriers cover high-cost patients.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell subsequently made that same commitment publicly.
People criticized Collins’ deal as a leap of faith. They said she’d been rolled.
Here it is more than six months later. Has Collins gotten those votes? No.
Progress was being made on one of them in March until Republicans slipped the Hyde Amendment onto it, outlawing use of the money for abortion. Democrats bailed, which Republicans knew would happen when they put the amendment on the bill, which they opposed because they don’t want to stabilize Obamacare but to stomp it dead — no matter any Trump commitment, to speak oxymoronically.
Anyway, the issue probably is not outright repeal of Roe v. Wade. A case doing that altogether is unlikely to arise for appeal, and, even if so, Republicans like having the general case law with which to stir emotions in the Christian right and raise money.
The real case anymore is Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which affirmed Roe generally but allowed states to try to get away with whatever they thought they could get away with in terms of tightening the screws on abortion’s availability and ease under the easily adjustable standards of fetus “viability” and “undue burden.”
A state law requiring that any clinic conducting abortions must keep in operation on-site a full-time and fully equipped trauma center with a staff neurosurgeon in case of abortion-procedure emergencies — that surely won’t be far away after Collins votes for a pivotal nominee who — guess what? — expresses no hostility during his confirmation process toward Roe v. Wade.
Meantime, nonsurgical protections against pregnancy — pre and post — are getting so sophisticated that actual surgical abortions are declining precipitously.
The greater issues will be availability and cost.
Most likely, the future will offer continued restriction of abortion to the point that only rich women can afford to get one. Getting an abortion will remain legal like the Mayo Clinic is legal — and become as hard as the Mayo Clinic to get to.
Collins will have been rolled again, whether by naivete or design, which is hard to tell.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.