From Village Voice
EDITH JONES: Once referred to as "the Federalist Society pinup girl" and the "horsewoman of the right-wing apocalypse," Jones famously told a defense lawyer that his last-minute appeal in a death sentence case was ruining her cocktail hour.
Jones, appointed by Ronald Reagan to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, has said she doubts that lawsuits result in social justice. She was Bush Sr.'s choice after David Souter, is thought to have business acumen, and is the female candidate with the most experience.
In Jones's view, the legal system has been corrupted. "The first 100 years of American lawyers," she told the Harvard Federalist Society, "were trained on Blackstone, who wrote that 'the law of nature, dictated by God himself, is binding in all counties and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all force and all their authority from this original.' The Framers created a government of limited power with this understanding of the rule of law—that it was dependent on transcendent religious obligation."
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0529,mondoweb,66033,6.html -----------------
from Blogicus:
In sum, if courts were to delve into the facts underlying Roe ... they might conclude that the woman's 'choice' is far more risky and less beneficial," Jones wrote. However, without an exception to mootness, Jones wrote, the court is barred from considering McCorvey's present evidence. "One may fervently hope that the
Court will someday acknowledge such developments and re-evaluate Roe ... accordingly," she wrote. "That the Court's constitutional decision-making leaves our nation in a position of willful blindness to evolving knowledge should trouble any dispassionate observer."
What's more, Jones cited the evidence presented by scientists and doctors that prove the pre-born child develops earlier than anticipated in the early 70s and is sensitive to pain.
But perhaps most importantly, Judge Jones cited evidence showing that neonatal and medical science "now graphically portrays, as science was unable to do 31 years ago, how a baby develops sensitivity to external stimuli and to pain much earlier than was then believed." The evidence reviewed by Judge Jones on the issue of fetal pain was similar to that produced by the federal government in recent trials on the constitutionality of partial-birth abortion. There, an Oxford-educated specialist in neonatal pain, Dr. Kanwaljeeet Anand, testified that unborn children are likely to feel pain in the womb by 20 weeks of gestation — perhaps even earlier — and that abortion could therefore cause excruciating pain for an unborn child. Reviewing similar evidence before her, Judge Jones concluded that "if courts were to delve into the facts underlying Roe's balancing scheme with present day knowledge, they might conclude that the woman's 'choice' is far more risky and less beneficial, and the child's sentience far more advanced, than the Roe court knew."
http://www.blogicus.com/archives/judge_in_norma_mccorvey_case_blasts_roe_v_wade_abortion_decision.php
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