Today is Constitution Day marking the close 226 years ago of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia. Yet when it comes to constitutional rights, the Washington Post prefers those read into it the document by judicial activists on the Supreme Court over those plainly written in the text of the federal charter. Witness today's editorial page, which both pushes for more gun control, ostensibly to save lives, while blasting the Commonwealth of Virginia's new abortion clinic regulations, which make abortions rarer and hence, well, save lives.
"Will this latest massacre move Americans to more than sorrow?" the Post editorial board asked in the subheadline of their pro-gun control editorial, "Regret, reloaded." "Everything was supposed to change after a man with a semiautomatic weapon mowed down 20 elementary school children in their classrooms last December. But for the politicians, nothing changed," the Post groused.
Although the editorial board avoided an explicit call for fresh gun control legislation, the implication was clear: something must be done in Congress to further regulate guns to prevent another mass shooting. But further down on the same page, the Post called Virginians to action to thwart new abortion clinic regulations which saves lives and protects women.
In "Abortion on the ballot in Va.," the editorial board warned that the "survival" of the Old Dominion's abortion clinics was on the line if voters elect Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli as governor. Whether "access to abortion, sanctioned by the Supreme Court, is real or notional" will be decided in November, as "[t]he decision will rest squarely with whomever is elected the next governor."
The Washington Post hasn't met a gun control idea it doesn't like, nor does it worry that more onerous gun laws will make it harder for gun stores to stay in business. After all, the fewer gun stores, the harder it is for law-abiding folks to exercise their constitutional rights to keep and bear arms.
But for abortion, well, that's a different story. Heaven forbid Virginia regulate abortion clinics like they regulate facilities which provide other invasive outpatient procedures, that is a threat to abortion rights by virtue of restricting access. And even there, the lament that abortion clinics are an endangered species is ludicrous. Indeed, although Texas has abortion clinic regulations akin to the Old Dominion's, Planned Parenthood actually opened a brand-new, donor-funded facility this year in Fort Worth that abides by the letter of the law.
