Bradley questioned President Biden’s breadth of authority.
“Exactly how much authority of this kind the executive branch possesses on its own, and how much of this authority would have to be exercised by Congress, is often debatable,” he explained, “even in situations where it is clear that, as a whole, the federal government has the power to act.”
Another example
As an example of what he called a “complex problem,” Bradley pointed to the recent Supreme Court cases regarding the Covid-19 vaccine. In January, the court blocked Biden’s vaccine-or-test mandate issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for large businesses, while allowing a new federal rule to go forward that requires millions of health care workers to be fully vaccinated.
“In the OSHA mandate case pertaining to large employers, the Court basically said that Congress had the constitutional power to mandate vaccines, and that Congress could have delegated the authority to OSHA to mandate vaccines,” Bradley summarized. “But, the Court held, Congress had not actually done so, and so OSHA acted without the requisite legal authority.”
Bradley examined the legislative branch’s authority regarding abortion.
“The brue constitutional fact is that, under existing Court interpretations of the extent of Congressional power, Congress could legislate permissive abortion across the United States,” he said, adding that politicians and pundits sometimes describe this as “codifying Roe.”
This, he added, is unlikely.
“The present Senate is not going to do that, of course, and the Senate elected this coming November is even less likely to do so,” he added. “That is why the extent of Executive authority — starting with our ‘pro-choice Catholic’ President — to make abortion available is so important.”
But he pointed to the judicial branch as the solution.
“The only way to put a stop to all of this, and thus the only way to truly end legal abortion, is for the Supreme Court to hold as they should but probably won’t in Dobbs,” he said. “The Court should hold that the constitutional guarantee that all ‘persons’ have the equal protection of laws against being killed extends all the way to conception, because that is when ‘persons’ begin.”
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He feared that the court would make a “fateful mistake.”
“The Court is likely to ‘overrule’ Roe in Dobbs,” he said. “But it is not likely to write a truly pro-life opinion.”
Instead, he predicted, the court “will mistakenly mantain that our Constitution is ‘silent’ on the subject of abortion and therefore ‘neutral’ about it, neither prohibiting nor permitting abortion. It is a matter not for the courts, but for the states and the national government (other than the national judiciary) to decide.”
Pro-life response
Pro-life groups weighed in on the idea of leasing federal land to abortion clinics. Mallory Carroll, the vice president of communications at the Susan B. Anthony List, criticized the strategy.
“It is no surprise that pro-abortion activists would float an idea like this,” Carroll told CNA. “The abortion lobby is so afraid of the will of the American people that they’ll do anything to circumvent state action to protect the lives of the unborn.”
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