{"id":1444864,"date":"2022-04-18T19:29:44","date_gmt":"2022-04-18T23:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1444864"},"modified":"2022-04-18T19:29:50","modified_gmt":"2022-04-18T23:29:50","slug":"a-good-solid-republican-how-i-helped-the-sexual-revolution-hijack-the-womens-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/a-good-solid-republican-how-i-helped-the-sexual-revolution-hijack-the-womens-movement\/","title":{"rendered":"A Good Solid Republican: How I Helped The Sexual Revolution Hijack The Women\u2019s Movement"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fa-good-solid-republican-how-i-helped-the-sexual-revolution-hijack-the-womens-movement%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1444864&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2022\/04\/Browder.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.3.0\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p><i>The following is an exclusive excerpt from Subverted: How I Helped The Sexual Revolution Revolution Hijack The Women\u2019s Movement, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Subverted-Helped-Sexual-Revolution-Movement\/dp\/1621643212\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1SAKABKL0D662&#038;keywords=subverted&#038;qid=1649802577&#038;sprefix=subverted%2Caps%2C88&#038;sr=8-1\">available now<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><span>To the ordinary American, the National Organization for Women\u2019s newfound claim that sex without the kids will set you free was a completely foreign concept. The Bolsheviks had legalized abortion on demand in Russia in 1920. But nothing of that sort had ever happened in the United States.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Perhaps no one in 1971 was more perplexed by women\u2019s cries for abortion on demand than Richard Nixon\u2019s latest appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court. In his early sixties, salt-and-pepper haired and married with three grown daughters, Harry Blackmun was a churchgoing Methodist, steady and reliable. He had grown up in a working-class neighborhood in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the son of a father who struggled to make ends meet by wholesaling fruits and vegetables, a business that eventually failed. Harry wrote in his diary, \u201cNever can I remember a time when Dad was ever a step ahead of the world; he was always worrying and stewing about when he should get the instant batch of bills paid off.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Talented as an orator, Harry won a scholarship to Harvard at age sixteen, but separating from home for him had been tough. The night before he left for his sophomore year at Harvard, both he and his mother Theo wept. In his diary, he wrote that \u201cparting with the best home folks available and with one\u2019s greatest pals in the world, was one darn hard job.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Harry worked his way through college and, even years later as a Supreme Court Justice, typically took a full briefcase of work home after putting in a twelve-hour day. When his daughters were small, he would cuddle them in the rocking chair and sing what one of his daughters called \u201cdeeply comforting songs\u201d like \u201cToora-loora-loora.\u201dHe was a loyal Harvard man, but his favorite piece of music was the Yale \u201cWhiffenpoof Song\u201d: \u201cWe\u2019re poor little lambs who have lost our way.\u201d He was certainly not the sort of man to advocate \u201csex-without-the-kids\u201d as the ultimate path to anyone\u2019s freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>So how did Republican Harry Blackmun (by all accounts a loving son, devoted husband, and good dad) wind up writing the Supreme Court opinions that legalized abortion throughout the nation?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>To put it mildly, it wasn\u2019t easy for Harry. The assignment to write the opinions for <\/span><i><span>Roe v. Wade <\/span><\/i><span>and its companion case <\/span><i><span>Doe v. Bolton <\/span><\/i><span>had fallen on Harry by surprise. Chief Justice Warren Burger assigned him the task of writing the opinions even though Harry\u2019s craftsmanship lacked finesse and he was \u201cby far the slowest writer on the Court.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>What\u2019s more, Burger believed the Justices\u2019 votes on the abortion cases in the closed-door conference after oral arguments had been too close to call and the Court\u2019s final decision would \u201cstand or fall on the writing\u201d of Blackmun\u2019s opinions. Further, Harry thought the oral arguments in <\/span><i><span>Roe <\/span><\/i><span>had been weak. To write an opinion that would sway his colleagues, he believed he needed a lot more facts, information, and insights than attorneys on either side of the case had provided.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Harry Seeks Guidance<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span>To sort out the abortion mess, the first person Harry turned to for help was his old friend Tom Keys, head of the Mayo Clinic Medical Library in Rochester, Minnesota. Blackmun had spent nine of the best years of his life working at Mayo as a \u201cdoctor\u2019s attorney.\u201d Tom immediately rallied his library staff and began sending Harry articles on the Hippocratic oath and abortion history.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Harry also sought advice from the women in his family. One night when he was having dinner with his wife Dottie and their three daughters, he asked the women around the table what they thought of abortion.\u00a0 When he received four radically different answers, <\/span><i><span>New York Times<\/span><\/i><span> journalist Linda Greenhouse reports in <\/span><i><span>Becoming Harry Blackmun<\/span><\/i><span>, Harry\u00a0 put down his fork mid-bite, pushed back his chair, and said, \u201cI think I\u2019ll go lie down. I\u2019m getting a headache.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Although Harry claimed to be unsure of his wife\u2019s position on abortion, Dottie told one of his law clerks (a young male attorney who favored laissez-faire abortion) that she was doing everything she could to further the cause. \u201cYou and I are working on the same thing,\u201d she told the law clerk. \u201cMe at home and you at work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>To write his opinions, Harry retired to the Justices\u2019 second-floor library, where he spent most of his waking hours in silent solitude, laboriously working at a long mahogany desk. Months passed. As the winter snows melted into spring and D.C.\u2019s cherry blossoms burst into bloom, Harry remained squirreled away in the library.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>When at last in mid-May Harry showed a draft of his <\/span><i><span>Roe <\/span><\/i><span>opinion for the first time to one of his politically leftist law clerks, the clerk claimed to be \u201castonished\u201d the draft was so crudely written<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>and poorly organized. When he circulated the draft on May 18, 1972, to the other justices, Harry\u2019s more liberal colleagues on the bench\u2014Justices William Douglas, William Brennan, and Thurgood Marshall\u2014were disappointed, whereas conservative Justice Byron White strongly dissented.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Why were Douglas and Marshall so disappointed? Catholic feminist Mary Meehan suggests one possible reason. Meehan reports, \u201cJustices Douglas and Marshall had been lacking in sexual restraint\u2014to put it mildly\u2014well before the \u201960s, and the problems of both were aggravated at times by heavy drinking. Perhaps they realized that legal abortion could be extremely helpful to <\/span><i><span>men<\/span><\/i><span>\u2014enabling them to escape paternity suits, years of child support, social embarrassment, and the wrath of betrayed wives. But none of this, of course, would be mentioned in the Court\u2019s opinions.\u201d\u00a0 Meehan reports that in 1961 Justice Douglas had also written to <\/span><i><span>Population Bomb <\/span><\/i><span>pamphleteer Hugh Moore (wealthy inventor of the Dixie Cup and a fierce advocate of population control), saying, \u201cI have seen some of the literature . . . all of which I thought was excellent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In any case, when Harry failed to produce a competent pro-abortion draft of his opinions, he got flak from his colleagues. Having vowed to do his best \u201cto arrive at something which would command a court,\u201d11 Harry withdrew the draft, asking that all copies be returned to him. He planned to do more work on his opinions over the summer. In late July 1972, Harry flew to Rochester to immerse himself in research at the Mayo Clinic medical library. Meanwhile, his politically liberal, $15,000-a-year law clerk George Frampton Jr., age twenty-eight, volunteered to stay in Washington until early August to help research and draft the opinions. The two talked by phone almost daily.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>An Unexpected Guide Appears<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span>An early draft Harry wrote on the history of abortion in his small, cramped longhand reveals he was still struggling. Writing is difficult, and Harry wasn\u2019t much of a writer. On the subject of abortion, Harry was finding it hard to think clearly. Young George, on the other hand, was an excellent writer. He\u2019d graduated from Harvard Law School in 1969 (where he was managing editor of the <\/span><i><span>Harvard Law Review<\/span><\/i><span>), and he had at his fingertips an extraordinarily handy resource\u2014a highly persuasive book entitled <\/span><i><span>Abortion: The first authoritative and documented report on the laws and practices governing abortion in the U.S. and around the world, and how\u2014for the sake of women everywhere\u2014they can and must be reformed.<\/span><\/i><span>\u00a0 It was written by Lawrence Lader, a Harvard-educated magazine writer who became the co-founder of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (now called NARAL Pro-Choice America).\u00a0 Lader\u2019s book, a masterpiece of propaganda containing many half-truths and some outright lies, supplied much of the historic background Blackmun\u2019s opinion had previously lacked. But more important, Lader\u2019s book provided a coherent form or template that tied together the many disconnected fragments of thought that had previously kept Blackmun\u2019s abortion opinions from working. In all-new sections on the history of abortion written by George and dated August 10, 1972, Lader\u2019s book suddenly appears in the footnotes for the first time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In a lengthy five-page, single-spaced letter, typed on legal-size paper, which he sent to Harry along with the draft, George made an unusual suggestion. He suggested that Harry consider circulating this new draft before it was cite-checked by a clerk. Cite-checking is detailed fact-checking to ensure that a judicial decision is sound. Why would a junior law clerk suggest circulating a draft that hadn\u2019t been cite-checked?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>George was eager for Harry to circulate his draft before oral arguments were reheard in October\u2014for three reasons: He wrote that circulating the revised draft before oral argument would \u201cnail down [Blackmun\u2019s] keeping the assignment,\u201d \u201cshould influence questions and thinking at oral argument,\u201d and \u201cmight well influence voting.\u201d Though George stated he would not recommend delayed cite-checking \u201cas standard operating procedure,\u201d he thought that in this particular case the benefits strongly outweighed the disadvantages.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>We don\u2019t know when or even if the history section in Blackmun\u2019s abortion opinions was ever cite-checked. But we do know that if it happened, the fact-checking was faulty. For when Blackmun accepted Larry Lader, a mere magazine writer, as a reliable authority on history, philosophy, and theology, he became as a blind man following a blind guide. Despite his best efforts, Harry failed to see he had embraced a well-crafted verbal mirage, mistaking it for the truth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Let us be very clear about what happened here. The picture that emerges from Blackmun\u2019s papers, available for public inspection at the U.S. Library of Congress, is that of a justice who, in the words of Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning, pro-abortion historian David J. Garrow, \u201cceded far too much of his judicial authority to his clerks.\u201d It is plain from an inspection of Blackmun\u2019s papers that his clerks made, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.legalaffairs.org\/issues\/May-June-2005\/feature_garrow_mayjun05.msp\"><span>in Garrow\u2019s words<\/span><\/a><span>, \u201chistorically significant and perhaps decisive contributions to <\/span><i><span>Roe <\/span><\/i><span>and <\/span><i><span>Doe<\/span><\/i><span>\u201d\u2014a degree of involvement Garrow calls \u201cindefensible.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Lader set himself up as an authority on centuries of abortion legal history and also on two millennia of Catholic teachings about abortion\u2014and Blackmun and his clerk fell for the ruse. In the final version of the <\/span><i><span>Roe v. Wade <\/span><\/i><span>decision, Lader\u2019s masterpiece of propaganda is cited at least seven times, and the scholarly papers of Cyril Chestnut Means (a NARAL attorney who falsified abortion legal history)\u00a0 are cited another seven times.\u00a0 Lader, of course, was just a clever wordsmith\u2014certainly no expert on history.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>And yet as the late Notre Dame theologian Father James Burtchaell observed, it is \u201cclear in the record that Justice Blackmun was indebted for the innards of his argument to two of the major strategists of the abortion movement\u201d\u2014Means and Lader.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Why would anyone on a judicial body as intellectually respected and erudite as the U.S. Supreme Court give a man who was little more than a popular magazine writer such high credibility as a historian? On the one hand, perhaps no one will ever completely know. On the other hand, Jacques Ellul in his book titled <\/span><i><span>Propaganda <\/span><\/i><span>suggests the well-educated intellectual may be more vulnerable to propaganda than the common man is. \u201cNaturally, the educated man does not <\/span><i><span>believe <\/span><\/i><span>in propaganda; he shrugs and is convinced that propaganda has no effect on him,\u201d Ellul explains. \u201cThis is, in fact, one of his great weaknesses, and propagandists are well aware that in order to reach someone, one must first convince him that propaganda is ineffectual and not very clever. Because he is convinced of his own superiority, the intellectual is much more vulnerable than anybody else to this maneuver.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Ellul observed that intellectuals who consider themselves to be well-informed may, in fact, be \u201cthe most vulnerable of all to modern propaganda, for three reasons: (1) they absorb the largest amount of secondhand, unverifiable information; (2) they feel a compelling need to have an opinion on every important question of our time, and thus easily succumb to opinions offered to them by propaganda on all such indigestible pieces of information; (3) they consider themselves capable of \u2018judging for themselves.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Do Ellul\u2019s insights explain what happened to Harry and George as they laboriously wrote and rewrote <\/span><i><span>Roe v. Wade <\/span><\/i><span>and <\/span><i><span>Doe v. Bolton <\/span><\/i><span>until they finally succumbed to a propagandist\u2019s falsified version of history to get the job done? Maybe. Maybe not. In any case, Harry was deceived by Lader\u2019s propaganda, six other black-robed men on the bench went along with the ruse, and the tragic result was the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s most controversial decision since the <\/span><i><span>Dred Scott v. Sandford <\/span><\/i><span>decision denied personhood to black Americans in 1857.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>The Scholars Don\u2019t Buy It<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cThe immediate academic response to <\/span><i><span>Roe v. Wade<\/span><\/i><span>,\u201d observed <\/span><i><span>New York Times <\/span><\/i><span>reporter Linda Greenhouse, \u201cranged from tepid to withering.\u201d The first critiques came from the left.\u00a0 In a scathing <\/span><i><span>Yale Law Journal <\/span><\/i><span>article titled \u201cThe Wages of Crying Wolf: A Comment on <\/span><i><span>Roe v. Wade<\/span><\/i><span>,\u201d liberal law professor John Hart Ely (an abortion supporter) declared, \u201c<\/span><i><span>Roe <\/span><\/i><span>lacks even colorable support in the constitutional text, history, or any other appropriate source of constitutional doctrine.\u201d The opinion \u201cis bad,\u201d Ely added, \u201c. . . because it is <\/span><i><span>not <\/span><\/i><span>constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Ely\u2019s critique was soon joined by other influential voices. \u201cOne of the most curious things about <\/span><i><span>Roe<\/span><\/i><span>,\u201d Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe observed in <\/span><i><span>Harvard Law Review<\/span><\/i><span>, \u201cis that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In their essay \u201c<\/span><i><span>Roe v. Wade<\/span><\/i><span>: No Justification in History, Law, or Logic,\u201d Americans United for Life Legal Defense Fund attorneys Dennis J. Horan and Thomas J. Balch state: \u201cVirtually every aspect of the historical, sociological, medical, and legal arguments Justice Harry Blackmun used to support the <\/span><i><span>Roe <\/span><\/i><span>holdings has been subjected to intense scholarly criticism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Ironically, a year after <\/span><i><span>Roe <\/span><\/i><span>was released, Harry still wasn\u2019t completely comfortable with the Court\u2019s decision. Speaking in February 1974 to <\/span><i><span>The Washington Post<\/span><\/i><span>, Harry prophetically stated the <\/span><i><span>Roe v. Wade <\/span><\/i><span>ruling will be regarded \u201cas one of the worst mistakes in the court\u2019s history, or one of its great decisions, a turning point.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Sue Ellen Browder is former writer for Cosmopolitan magazine and author of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Subverted-Helped-Sexual-Revolution-Movement\/dp\/1586177966\">\u201cSubverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women\u2019s Movement.\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><i>The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following is an exclusive excerpt from Subverted: How I Helped The Sexual Revolution Revolution Hijack The Women\u2019s Movement, available now.To the ordinary American, the National Organization for Women\u2019s newfound<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":679,"featured_media":1444877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1444864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1444864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1444877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1444864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1444864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1444864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}