Justice Sam Alito Thinks It Took “Courage” to Strip Women of Their Right to Abortion

2 min readIt was the First Monday in October, so it was Opening Day for the carefully constructed conservative majority on the United States Supreme Court. In a CBS interview, Justice Samuel Alito threw out the ceremonial first bullshit. Alito was taken ill at a recent Federalist Society dinner in March, so the news out of the interview was about the possibility of Alito's retirement. (Why the hell a Supreme Court justice was at a Federalist society hootenanny is another question for another time.) Nevertheless, speculation on Alito's retirement might have drowned out the real news in the interview: that Justice Samuel Alito is as big a whiner as exists on the American right. From The Hill:“Well, the leading example is Dobbs [v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization]. I think that required courage by all of the justices in the majority,” he said. “We didn’t know it at the time. We didn’t know it when we produced the draft that was leaked, but it required courage to go ahead with that because of the implications.” “There are others. I mean, there are cases that have resulted in the loss of old friendships; that’s something that you have to live with,” Alito continued.Is it being uncivil to point out that Alito's Dobbs decision was something a number of women have been unable to live with at all?When asked if part of the job of a Supreme Court justice is to lose friends, receive death threats or wear a bulletproof vest, he responded, “It’s part of the job that you’re going to displease people by making decisions on controversial matters because one side or the other is going to really dislike you because of the decisions. The physical threats and the harassment represent something new in our society and something that’s quite disturbing, and I think it’s a danger,” Alito concluded.Death threats are bad and wrong. Opening the gates to actual death in the service of patriarchal religiosity—which is something of which Alito has boasted overseas—is very much worse. As is demolishing the separation of powers in support of an oligarchical philosophy and its half-mad front man. The Roger Taney Memorial Society is holding a seat for you at the head table, big guy.