The politicization of abortion began before Roe, and history shows how, over time, the personal became the political on the Supreme Court
He has written for then 1921, the future Supreme Court justice Benjamin Cardozo wrote a book examining how judges write their opinions. Judicial opinions, he asserted, did not simply reflect this or that legal theory but also the judges who wrote them—human beings influenced, as we all are, by upbringing and experience.
, that people often form their opinions of abortion based on their exposure to it—to what Blackmun termed “the raw edges of human existence.” He was right. For abortion had not yet been overtaken by politics. Indeed, both Powell and Blackmun had been nominated to the court by the Republican Richard Nixon while their fellow justice, Byron White, who opposed legalizing abortion, had been nominated by the Democrat John Kennedy.
There was thus still room in this country for what Cardozo had called “acquired convictions.” And as the years passed, politicians continued to acquire convictions that ran counter to their parties’ ideologies. Ronald Reaganon buyers of guns after his press secretary was shot. Dick Cheney supported gay marriage after his daughter came out. John McCain co-sponsored an anti-torture amendment years after he himself had been tortured.
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