Alma Flesch —
Retirement and aging do not necessarily lead to detachment from the problems roiling the world. Many older people remain engaged, often passionately, in current issues. Alma Flesch, is one such person, a retired lawyer in her late eighties, who has often expressed her views in letters to the editor published in the New York Times. The fate of Roe v. Wade at the hands of the current Supreme Court is of such importance to her that, though aware that any given letter to the editor has a low chance of seeing print, she sent out two such letters in a single week. As expected the Times did not publish them. But the Owl is happy to do so, reprinting them below as originally written, believing they will be of interest to our readers.*
letter 1.
- Subject: ‘My Body, My Choice’ For the Right
- To the Editor:
It pains me to disagree with Michelle Goldberg’s column because I fervently believe that women should be able to chart the course of their own lives. Nevertheless, I find her analysis flawed. She criticizes those who decline vaccination for asserting their right to control their own bodies while denying a similar right to pregnant women. But the analogy fails. Anti-vaxxers simply refuse medical intervention. Women who want an abortion seek such intervention. The cases would be analogous if, for instance, a woman in danger of miscarrying refused medical help to save the life of the foetus or, for that matter, her own. This, as far as I know, she is perfectly free to do. Thus the pro-choice movement is not grounded solely on control of one own’s body; it is more akin to the right-to-die movement than to the anti-vaccination movement.A better course would be to rein in Americans’ unfettered and rarely examined individualism, and to recognize that in certain situations the rights of the community override those of individuals. Balancing the interests of the parties would be easy work under such an approach. The threat of the virus to the community is imminent and severe, while the threat to individuals from vaccination is minor to non-existent. A woman’s right to choose, on the other hand, presents no such threat to the community, and curbing her individual right is merely an attempt to impose on her others’ political or religious ideologies.
Alma Suzin Flesch
letter 2.
- Subject: The Supreme Court Gaslights Its Way to the End of Roem>
- To the Editor:
At his confirmation hearing Chief Justice Roberts told the Senate that judges are like umpires – they don’t make the rules, only apply them; and that Roe v. Wade is settled law. Now searching for a way to uphold Mississippi’s restrictive and punitive statute which clearly violates Roe v. Wade, the chief justice points to a draft document written by Justice Blackmun, the author of the court’s opinion, before that decision was handed down. The draft suggests that the standard of fetal viability in earlier jurisprudence is mere dictum. Chief Justice Roberts thus implies that this standard is not a binding precedent for his court.
In invoking the rule concerning obiter dicta, the chief justice ignores an even more fundamental organizing principle of legal analysis: relevance. Justice Blackmun’s musings are simply not relevant to the present discussion. The opinion he wrote in Roe v. Wade was not an op ed piece. It was an expression of the consensus among the majority of the justices concerning a constitutional question, and it enshrined the fetal viability standard. The other members of the majority might have arrived at that consensus by paths different from Justice Blackmun’s, but those too are irrelevant. The majority opinion in a Supreme Court case is not a piece of advocacy. It is a rule issued for the guidance of lower courts and a precedent to be followed in future Supreme Court decisions. The stench of political partisanship which Justice Sotomayor fears already rises.
Alma Suzin Flesch
* if you’d like to read the articles these letters are responding to, here are the links:
letter 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/opinion/abortion-vaccine-mandate.html
letter 2: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/opinion/abortion-supreme-court.html