By pikselstock @Adobe Stock
Biden Era Malarky
Often, overriding a Democratic choice has been the inclination to bow before an ideological agenda dressed up as scientific consensus. According to James Freeman, there was not much amusing during the Covid panic when medical authority was used by government officials to silence dissent, restrict human liberty, and impose enormous and unnecessary burdens on America’s children.
Wear Your Mask …
… today one has to be feeling a little better about the ability of a free people to make democratic choices without having to bow before an ideological agenda dressed up as scientific consensus.
Who Is in Charge?
As late as last December, Americans wondered who was running the government.
… the nominal Biden administration attempted one last effort to use the court system to take power over a controversial question away from voters. Specifically, the government attempted to persuade the Supreme Court to block states from deciding whether sex-transition treatments can be administered to minor children.
Team Biden defended such practices with a dubious appeal to expert authority, as if it was settled science that such treatments are appropriate and necessary. Thank goodness the Supreme Court didn’t buy this last heaping helping of Biden-era malarkey.
Throughout the world of medicine, second thoughts are already upending trendy treatments and protocols, continues Mr. Freeman. As a reminder that the American people and their representatives are entitled to disagree with those who hold themselves out as experts, or that courts may not “sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation,” Mr. Freeman relies on Justice Thompson as his example:
The views of self-proclaimed experts do not “shed light on the meaning of the Constitution.” Dobbs… Thus, whether “major medical organizations” agree with the result of Tennessee’s democratic process is irrelevant… To hold otherwise would permit elite sentiment to distort and stifle democratic debate under the guise of scientific judgment, and would reduce judges to mere “spectators … in construing our Constitution.”
This Court acknowledged the importance of reserving to the democratic process the right to decide controversial medical questions.
In Dobbs, the respondents sought to invoke the authority of “overwhelming medical consensus” and “numerous major medical organizations” to dispatch with Mississippi’s asserted interest in minimizing pain for the unborn… The Court pointedly rejected the notion that a consensus among popular expert groups could remove “the mitigation of fetal pain” from the “legitimate interests” of the people…
Whether or not experts agree is not the issue here, added Justice Thompson. When legislation does not cross constitutional lines, noted the Justice, States must have leeway to effect the judgment of their citizens.
… when this Court has nonetheless given exalted status to expert opinion, it has been to our detriment: Past deference to expertise provided the theory of eugenics “added legitimacy and considerable momentum,” with “[t]his Court thr[owing] its prestige behind the eugenics movement in its 1927 decision upholding the constitutionality of Virginia’s forced-sterilization law.” Box v. Planned Parenthood of Ind. and Ky., Inc...
Fortunately, we do not repeat that mistake today.
Before this Court, the United States asserted that “overwhelming evidence” supports the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for treating pediatric gender dysphoria, and that this view represents “the overwhelming consensus of the medical community.”… These claims are untenable…
The treatments at issue are subject to a rapidly evolving debate that demonstrates a lack of medical consensus over their risks and benefits… It is undisputed… that these treatments carry risks. Research suggests that, aside from interrupting a child’s normal pubertal development, puberty blockers may lead to decreased bone density and impacts on brain development.
What would people do, asks Mr. Freeman, without the right to disagree with those who hold themselves out as experts?
If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for the Richardcyoung.com free weekly email.
