President Donald Trump announced on Monday, July 9, that Judge Brett Kavanaugh is his pick to replace the retiring United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kavanaugh is already being hailed by many conservative groups as an excellent jurist while being vilified by many liberal organizations as a detriment to civil liberties. The battle ahead will dominate the news for the next three or four months.
It’s a discussion Christians should join. After all, there’s so much at stake. To put it simply, the stakes are much higher with this nomination than they were with Justice Gorsuch replacing the late Antonin Scalia. In that case, the President was replacing one conservative justice with another.
But this time around, the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh could alter the philosophical balance on the Court for generations to come. Of course, Justice Kennedy was no “liberal.” He was very often the fifth vote in cases of importance to conservatives, especially in this past term where he voted with conservative justices in all fourteen 5-4 votes.
But he certainly was not conservative in his views on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. He, along with Justices O’Connor and Souter, authored the decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which not only saved Roe but created an entirely new rationale for the right to abortion.
Christian leaders and groups were mostly positive in their reaction to President Trump’s nomination of Kavanaugh. About 40 evangelical leaders co-signed a document applauding the selection and urging the Senate to “work diligently to confirm his appointment without obstruction.”
“Supreme Court nominations are a crucial aspect of any president’s legacy,” the letter read. “With Judge Kavanaugh, President Trump has an opportunity to shape the direction of the Supreme Court for a generation or more. As evangelical leaders, we support President Trump’s nominee and will pray and work for a quick confirmation process.”
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, also applauded the nomination. “From the day Justice Kennedy retired, the Left has sought to make this vacancy all about abortion – even though many other significant issues are at stake including religious freedom and free speech. Under the Obama administration, we saw a growing assault on religious freedom and the courts became a battleground for secularists seeking to remove faith from the public square.”
Voices on the left immediately began announcing the imminent overturning of Roe v. Wade. David Cole, national legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “The future of Roe v. Wade is very much in question.” And CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin stated that there was “just no doubt” that Roe v. Wade would be overturned.
It is way too early to proclaim the end of Roe v. Wade and for more than 55 million babies who have already lost their lives, this is too little, too late. But it does seem in Kavanaugh, that President Trump has nominated a solid, pro-life justice. And it is now at least a possibility that Roe v. Wade will be overturned in the years ahead.
This would be beyond historic. It would be unprecedented. It would mark the first time that the court made a radical, anti-life turn only to reverse course decades later. And it would mark a major turning point in the cultural life of our nation, since the overturning of Roe v. Wade seemed like an impossible dream for years.
Vox opines that “a Court without Kennedy is substantially more likely to: Overturn Roe v. Wade and rule in favor of religious challenges to anti-discrimination law, and perhaps, in an extreme case, reverse some past Supreme Court rulings on gay rights.”
There is a huge cultural divide in the U.S. right now and the stakes riding on this confirmation are higher than any in recent memory, so you can expect a nasty, mudslinging assault from the left to try to stop or delay Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
Let’s pray for God’s mercy on our nation, for the continuing turning of hearts towards life and conservative Christian values and that Judge Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed as the next Justice to the Supreme Court.