Roe v. Wade required multiple addicts to federalize legalized abortion. History often requires addicts.
Jeffrey Rosen reviews the book Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade by Clarke D. Forsythe
Reading about historical figures and history through the lens of alcoholism is a mind-altering experience. History is radically transformed by alcoholics relative to what would otherwise be, without their influence. In nearly every field outside of science and mathematics, far more dramatic changes to history have been initiated by alcoholics than by non-addicts. A tiny sampling includes Abraham Lincoln’s assassination (assassin John Wilkes Booth was an alcoholic, as was Washington police officer John Parker, whose “need for a drink on the night of the assassination was so strong that he deserted his post outside the President’s box, left the theater, and went to a bar,” leaving Lincoln defenseless*) and John F. Kennedy’s Cuban missile crisis (few if any non-addicts would have taken risks the poly-drug addicted JFK took). Beethoven and John Lennon changed the history of music; Henry the 8th committed atrocities against wives and Josef Stalin committed unspeakable acts affecting millions of people; Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Allan Poe and Ernest Hemmingway radically transformed art and literature. As first pointed out in Drunks, Drugs & Debits, one cannot make sense of history without understanding the distortions of perception and memory that lead to the egomania, reckless risk-taking and abusive behaviors rooted in early- to middle-stage alcoholism, frequently taking form in the actions of multiple players.
The case of Roe v. Wade is but one of these history-making events created by multiple alcoholics. The case was brought by an alcoholic, Norma McCorvey (whose legal pseudonym is Jane Roe), who falsely claimed she had been raped, signed an affidavit to that effect and then became completely uninvolved in the three years of trials leading to the infamous Supreme Court decision. (As an aside, she’s now a very sober and pro-life Ron Paul supporter.)
Forsythe, according to Jeffrey Rosen, set out to answer the question of why the Supreme Court ruled with such sweeping scope that, at the time, it “isolated the United States as one of approximately nine countries that allow abortion after 14 weeks and one of only four nations (with Canada, China, and North Korea) that allow abortion for any reason after fetal viability.” He explains that abortion was essentially made a constitutional right because, while Justice Harry Blackmun wanted the parties to reargue the abortion cases (Roe v. Wade and its lesser-known companion case Doe v. Bolton) the following year, Justice William O. Douglas “threatened to publish a scorching dissent unless Blackmun agreed to decide the cases without reargument.” Rosen suggests Blackmun agreed only because of Douglas’s “prolonged tantrum,” as James Simon referred to it in his book, The Center Holds. There is no mention in the review that Forsythe has any idea that two alcoholics effected an outcome with such scope. ** Yet the clue is in the very words Rosen cited: “prolonged tantrum.”
Infants engage in tantrums. Adults generally do not, but when they engage in some adult version usually they are attempting to wield power capriciously. Such wielding of power is symptomatic of alcoholism.
While it’s challenging at best to prove alcoholism in well-known political figures (for why this is true, see the Top Story of issue # 57 in TAR and, even, Supreme Court justices, plenty of evidence often can be found in their personal lives. In the case of William O. Douglas the evidence is breathtaking in its style. At age 55, after 30 years of marriage, he divorced his wife and married his mistress. At age 65 he divorced his second wife and, five days after the divorce was final, married a 23-year-old law student. At age 67 he divorced yet again and married a 22-year-old former cocktail waitress/college student. Lucy Barry Robe, in her magnificent Co-Starring Famous Women and Alcohol, found that as the number of divorces increase, so do the odds of alcoholism; after four divorces the likelihood climbs to at least 85%. Considering the misbehaviors that addiction causes, which adversely affects the marriages of every alcoholic, a contrary finding would be stunning. Anecdotally, I have found the larger the age difference between spouses, the higher the odds of addiction. When we consider the need of the addict to inflate his or her ego the explanation is, for the addictionologist, self-evident: marrying an older man, especially an extremely successful one, is very ego-gratifying to a younger woman; marrying a young woman, especially an attractive one, is quite ego-gratifying to an older man who can say to other men without speaking, “Look at my hot babe!” In addition, the older man can more easily control the younger, less experienced woman, something many if not most alcoholics would set out to do.
Various reports work to substantiate a diagnosis of alcoholism in Justice Douglas. He had a “massive” desk drawer that was difficult to open because it was “stuffed” with so many whiskey bottles. His two children resented him for, among other reasons, having received a “Father of the Year” award when he was, according to them, “a cold, harsh and uninvolved parent.” Resentment is common among alcoholics and, probably, equally as common among their unaware victims. A number of sources describe Douglas as a “deeply flawed character,” including Harvard Professor of Law Alan Dershowitz; his article includes numerous publicly-known power-seeking behaviors that, to the addiction-aware, strongly indicate alcoholism. Finally, in Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas (the title alone serves as a clue to alcoholism), Bruce Allen Murphy describes Douglas’ “dishonesty and mistreatment of family and employees, his womanizing, drinking, hypochondria, and his paranoia.”
The correct answer, then, as to why the Supreme Court ruled with such sweeping scope (Forsythe’s question, which Rosen repeated as central to his review) goes much deeper than the idea that Blackmun ceded to Douglas’ demand that the case not be reargued. Forsythe and Rosen got the “tantrum” but failed to get the “why” behind the tantrum, which is crucial if history is to be understood. The Supreme Court ruled with sweeping scope because an alcoholic decided that’s what he wanted and a majority of justices ceded to an alcoholic’s tantrum.
* James Graham, The Secret History of Alcoholism, p. 118.
** Forsythe points out that under a regime of states’ rights there would have been a continuation of dozens of experiments in various degrees of restrictions on abortion (a dozen or so would maintain abortion on demand, another dozen would prohibit abortion except to save the life of the mother and thirty states might place greater restrictions than allowed under Roe), and that the ruling massively increased the power of the federal government to the detriment of states’ rights. Consider the war on drugs to get an idea of how this decision has greatly reduced experimentation in other areas of governance.