Update: I am embarassed to admit that I screwed up in this post. I’m leaving it here to serve as a lesson, mostly to me, but be sure to read the first two comments below. Many of my inflammatory comments (all of them?) were not just poorly researched, but untrue. For example, Alito held that the spousal notification (it is not a consent requirement) aspect of the law provided several exceptions (including parenthood, spousal sexual assault, and fear of bodily harm) and therefore did not constitute an undue burden. While I may not agree that these exceptions provide enough to counter an undue burden argument, I recognize that all my inflammatory examples below are unfair to Alito and the views he expressed. Mea culpa.

Dear Conservatives. Please justify supporting a man for the Supreme Court who actually believes a woman should be required to ask her wife-beating husband if she can have an abortion. You tell me, flat out, that you agree with sending a terrified, abused, battered woman to beg at the feet of her abuser before she can make a decision regarding her own health.

Don’t like the rhetoric about “a woman’s health”? Okay. How’s this? Tell me you will make a terrified, abused, battered woman go ask the man who hits her, who breaks her bones, who caused a miscarriage last year, tell me you will make her go to this man and get beaten again, maybe killed, to ask him if she can abort the latest baby they made together, or the baby his friends gave her when they were all drunk one night. Because the man up for the deciding vote on the Supreme Court, Judge Samuel Alito, believes this. He believes that a woman must be required to notify her spouse before she can have an abortion. It does not matter if he is the father. It does not matter if he beats her. It does not matter if he beats his other children. It does not matter, and pay close attention to this, it does not matter if he will kill her when she asks him.

The blood of those women, and of their unborn children, will be on your hands.

You think this is an extreme case? Well, the law does not discriminate between extreme cases and frivolous cases. Unless, of course, there are provisions written into the law, like a provision that takes into account the safety or health of the mother. But you don’t want those either.

You want me to make an extreme statement, so you can hate me, and write me off as a liberal nutjob? Fine, here: You tell me that you would agree with killing the mother if there is a chance it could save the unborn child. Tell me that. Then we can hate each other.

Love, Danny.