ike a group project with some of the worst people in the world, there are many people to blame for the likely overturning of Roe v. Wade. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, for one, who wrote the draft opinion claiming the landmark decision “was egregiously wrong from the start.” The other conservative justices who are expected to vote to strike it down. Donald Trump, who followed through on his pledge to exclusively appoint justices who would destroy a woman’s right to choose. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, who for some reason believed those justices when they suggested they wouldn’t do that. Antiabortion activists. The antiabortion lobby. We could go on. But while scores of people have played a role, one could argue that, in this group project from hell, there is no who deserves more blame here than Mitch McConnell.
As Politico noted on Tuesday, “there’s a direct line from the Senate minority leader’s decision to hold a high court vacancy open in 2016 to the potential demise of Roe six years later.” If you can’t remember that far back, or had to bury it in the deepest recesses of your mind as a coping mechanism, a quick refresher: After conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, Barack Obama had the opportunity, seeing as he was president, to nominate a justice to fill his seat. Yet before the 44th POTUS even mentioned the name Merrick Garland, McConnell was already vowing to block any and all nominees. “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” McConnell insisted. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.” That argument was obviously absurd given that the American people already had had a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice, and they had it when they voted for Obama, who still had almost an entire year left on his second term.
