THE TRAGEDY OF JUSTICE HARRY BLACKMUN

* In a 1983 interview with the Associated Press on the eve of his most famous decision's 10-year anniversary, Blackmun repeated the phrase "author of the abortion decision" slowly and softly. "We all pick up tabs," he said. "I'll carry this one to my grave."

-AP wire story about the death of Justice Harry Blackmun, 3/4/99

* People forget that it was a seven to two decision. They always typify it as a Blackmun opinion. But I think [Roe v. Wade] was right in 1973, and I think it was right today.

-Justice Blackmun announcing his retirement, 4/6/94

* For the remainder of his career, Justice Blackmun regarded Roe v. Wade with pride and a fierce attachment. "If it goes down the drain," he told a group of law students in 1986, "I'd still regard Roe v. Wade as a landmark in the progress of the emancipation of women."

-Reporter Linda Greenhouse in the New York Times, 3/5/99

* America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign."

-Brief submitted February 1994 by Mother Teresa in the unsuccessful U.S. Supreme Court appeal of the case of Alexander Loce v. New Jersey

* The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations. Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution.

-Harvard law professor and Watergate special counsel Archibald Cox (The Role of the Supreme Court in American Government, Oxford University Press, 1976, pp. 113,114)

* I dissent. I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review....

-Justice Byron White dissenting in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, 1/22/73

The tragedy of Justice Harry Blackmun is that it was not necessary for him to go to his grave with the label "author of the abortion decision." He could have followed the example of Chief Justice Warren Burger who originally had signed on to the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions but later changed his mind.

Justice Blackmun was granted an extraordinarily long life and 24 years on the Court -- ample time to see how "Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation," how the "so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men," and ample opportunity to renounce the decisions that unleashed the "culture of death" on America.

It is true that Roe v. Wade was a 7-2 decision, but Justice Blackmun, as its author, had the stature to reverse that disastrous decision single-handedly. Further, at the time of the Casey decision, the pro-abortion majority on the Court had slipped to 5-4. And who can doubt that Justices O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter would have joined him in reversing Roe v. Wade in the Casey decision if he had admitted to the utter failure of Roe? He did change his mind on other decisions.

Sadly, Justice Blackmun, who so self-consciously spoke of having been President Nixon's "third choice" to replace Justice Fortas, failed to grasp the opportunity to go to his grave as a first-rate justice: one who saw the light, changed his mind, and restored the right to life to the child in the womb. Now he will forever be "the author of the abortion decision" -- a fate like that of Chief Justice Roger Taney, "the author of the Dred Scott decision" that denied legal personhood to Black Americans.

The obituaries and testimonials about Justice Blackmun described him as a man of modest demeanor; a meticulous researcher of the law, trained as a mathematician at Harvard before he studied law; a sports fan who in one opinion recited the names of 88 baseball celebrities ("The list seems endless," he wrote); and a champion of the "little people," as he called them. But there was also Blackmun, the ideologue, who spoke of Roe v. Wade as "a step down the road toward the full emancipation of women."

Presumably, his daily life and most of his judicial opinions reflected his good qualities, but one is hard-pressed to find them in his abortion decisions.

A modest man would not have engaged in "an exercise of raw judicial power, an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review" -- as he did in Roe.

A meticulous researcher would have taken note of the biological facts about the beginning of a human being's life (the facts were presented to the Court), would have refrained from "fashioning a new constitutional right," and would not have failed "to confront the issue in principled terms."

A champion of the "little people," one who so eloquently exclaimed "Poor Joshua!" in an opinion in a case of child abuse, would not have brushed off the right to life of the children in the womb. Such a champion would mourn the millions of abortion victims -- a number far more "endless" than his list of baseball luminaries.

No, Justice Blackmun, you failed the "little people." You did not emancipate women. You "emancipated" predatory men!