‘Just the Beginning’: Democrats Lean into Scare Tactics Ahead of Abortion Ruling

An activist carries a placard with an image of US Supreme Associate Justice Brett Kavanaug
JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images
Ashley Oliver

While extreme acts of an alleged attempted murder and vandalism are cropping up ahead of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, some prominent Democrats are working to instill subtler but more prolific fears in Americans with their messaging about the case.

They paint an ominous picture of the ruling eventually affecting an individual’s ability to, for example, access birth control or legally marry someone of the same sex.

Far-left firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) shared on social media in May, “As we’ve warned, SCOTUS isn’t just coming for abortion – they’re coming for the right to privacy Roe rests on, which includes gay marriage + civil rights.”

Ocasio-Cortez provided her comments alongside an excerpt from the bombshell draft of the Dobbs ruling, which was leaked to Politico and published last month.

The ruling, in the form of a 67-page majority opinion from Justice Samuel Alito, revealed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had established a federal protection for abortion in 1973.

Alito described Roe as “egregiously wrong from the start” and detailed how no implied protections of abortion exist within the Constitution, including within the Fourteenth Amendment under which the court-established right to privacy falls.

Vice President Kamala Harris nevertheless used the draft opinion to warn at an EMILY’s List event that the forthcoming ruling — if the same as the draft — would serve as a “direct assault on our freedom.”

“When the right to privacy is attacked, anyone in our country may face a future where the government can interfere with their personal decisions,” Harris said, per NPR’s summary of the event.

Also citing the right to privacy, President Joe Biden asked in response to a question about the leaked opinion, “What are the next things that are going to be attacked? Because this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history, in recent American history.”

Contrary to these concerns being perpetuated by high-profile Democrats, Alito’s draft opinion unequivocally quashes the notion that rights established in previous Supreme Court cases would be on the table for reconsideration as a result of the court’s decision about Roe.

“And to ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion,” Alito states on page 62 of the leaked document.

Still, a column in the left-leaning Guardian asserted, “Banning abortions is just the start – next the US right want to outlaw contraception.”

Similarly, while a law professor speaking in an Intercept podcast conceded, “The idea that … abortion is distinctive, and it is distinctive because it involves the destruction of a potential human: OK,” the professor went on to ignore that concession, adding, “But nothing in the logic of this opinion allows for us to meaningfully sequester the prospect of invalidating rights to abortion from the prospect of invalidating rights to all of these other things.”

The idea that other rights will come under threat, which Alito’s draft explicitly rejects, is percolating across the country as Americans await what has become the most anticipated court decision of the year.

This unease appears as a backdrop on recent, more alarming reactions to the leaked opinion.

A man was, for instance, recently arrested near the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and is now facing an attempted murder charge. The man had been found with a pistol, knife, and other weapons near Kavanaugh’s home and allegedly said he had planned “to kill a specific Supreme Court Justice,” per the Justice Department.

Pro-abortion activists, some identifying with the group “Jane’s Revenge,” have vandalized and firebombed pro-life pregnancy centers, according to several local reports:

GRESHAM CENTER SET ON FIRE Our Gresham Pregnancy Resource Center was set on fire this morning at about 3 am. From…

Posted by First Image on Friday, June 10, 2022

Protesters have appeared at justices’ neighborhoods and homes, which follows Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announcing in 2020 that conservative justices “will pay the price” and former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki refusing — when asked about the matter in May — to condemn justices being doxed.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), the sole Republican woman on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Breitbart News in a statement that left-wing rhetoric and extremism are attempts to “intimidate and bully the Judiciary branch.”

Blackburn charged, “From spreading falsehoods to threatening the physical safety of Supreme Court Justices and encouraging the militant mob to break the law, the Democrats will do anything to get their way.”

“Joe Biden’s Department of Justice is refusing to enforce the current law preventing protests in front of Justice’s homes,” she continued, adding that “the left has called for action against the Supreme Court, and it is no coincidence that an individual was arrested for attempting to murder Justice Kavanaugh. The woke mob is willing to do everything in its power to threaten, intimidate and bully the Judiciary branch into getting its way.”

Blackburn herself became a target for her criticism that Griswold vs. Connecticut, which gave married couples a federal right to birth control in 1965, is “constitutionally unsound.”

A Daily Beast column used Blackburn’s criticism to support its argument that the Supreme Court would — if the leaked draft opinion becomes final — “zero in on marriage equality and the use of contraceptives, which will be next on the chopping block.”

The New Republic cited her name to reinforce its case that “abolishing birth control and gay marriage is on the table.”

The aforementioned Intercept podcast called Blackburn’s Griswold comment “writing on the wall,” warning Republicans are “showing you where they’re going.”

A Blackburn aide clarified to Breitbart News, “Despite the propaganda that the left is pushing to scare Americans, Senator Blackburn does not support banning birth control nor did she call for a ban.”

Pro-life activist Lila Rose has also been outspoken against the negative responses to the leaked opinion. Rose chided Ocasio-Cortez for “constant abortion-lobby pandering” when the New York Democrat sounded the alarm that the Supreme Court was “coming for … civil rights.”

Breitbart News’s Ken Klukowski made a point also getting lost amid all the aggressive objections to Alito’s draft opinion that, should the opinion stand, “voters will find that the abortion laws where they live largely reflect their values.”

The case is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, No. 19-1392 in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.

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