The Black Republican

Is it time to fight fire with fire? Allen E. Parker Jr. thinks so. The human-rights lawyer is trying to reverse Roe v. Wade by invoking an obscure part of the law that allows a plaintiff to sue to have a previous ruling in his favor reversed.

Parker believes Doe and Roe were wrongly decided and that there is a promising way to challenge them using the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FCRP) that govern federal trials. Parker’s approach differs from previous challenges in not relying primarily on arguments about the right to life of unborn children and constitutional errors in the decisions. Those arguments are true—and tried. No majority of justices has heeded them, even in a challenge to the flagrant barbarism of partial-birth abortion. Something different is needed, that “gives the Supreme Court a graceful way out of the problem it is in” over abortion, as Parker says. Rule 60 of the FRCP and Parker’s plaintiffs may be that something.

Rule 60 provides that “on motion and upon such terms as are just, the court may relieve a party … from a final judgment … for the following reasons: … it is no longer equitable that the judgment should have prospective application.” The original plaintiff may return to court to ask that a judgment be reversed if it is now unjust. There is no statute of limitations.

While I wish him good luck, I think Mr. Parker's human-rights background can lead him to an even more startling injustice resulting from abortion.

I can understand that politics makes strange bedfellows, but I find it hard to grasp how self-appointed leaders of the black community like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton - who normally play the race card at every opportunity - can spurn the chance to pronounce that nothing short of a genocidal campaign has been has been waged on African-Americans to the tune of 14 million children in 30 years. Surely this would rank right up there with the high rate of incarceration for black men, wouldn't it? Perhaps they think that being black isn't even skin-deep... if you're in the womb.