There appears to be little reason for the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act. As Ronald Reagan’s former Solicitor General, Charles Fried, said after the oral arguments, the legal rationale used by opponents of the law was “beneath contempt,” but should the Justices accept it, they would be breaking nearly two hundred years of precedent and writing new meaning into the Constitution.

That would be judicial activism, which, ironically, happens to be a favorite line of attack for Republicans against liberal justices. For example:

REP. STEVE KING (R-IA): If we’re going to respect judge-made law and stop praying in our public schools, that was the beginning of the judicial activism that’s begun to break down this civilization, and this culture.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): Unelected and serving with lifetime tenure, and substituting their view for the views of the people’s…the people and their elected representatives. That’s not the way our democracy is supposed to work.

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): Judges are not policymakers. That’s what we are in the Congress of the United States. Judges are called on to decide the facts and to apply the law.

Watch:

As E.J. Dionne wrote of the Court’s deliberations, “It fell to the court’s liberals — the so-called ‘judicial activists,’ remember? — to remind their conservative brethren that legislative power is supposed to rest in our government’s elected branches.”

- Zachary Bernstein

Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York took his case against the Affordable Care Act’s new rule requiring insurers and employers to provide preventive care services — including contraception — at no additional cost to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. The Catholic Church is fighting the requirement against the tide of public opinion and despite being specifically exempt from providing birth control to its members.

Dolan pulled no punches, however, going so far as to imply that the requirement would undermine the “American enterprise” and spread “secularism” throughout the nation:

DOLAN: You’re a better historian than I am Bill, you know that every great movement in — in American history has been driven by people of religious conviction. And if we duct tape the churches — I’m just not talking about the Catholic Church — if we duct tape the role of religion and the churches and morally convince people in the marketplace that’s going to lead to a huge deficit a huge void. And there are many people who want to fill it up, namely a new religion called secularism, ok, which — which would be as doctrinaire and would consider itself as infallible as they caricature the other religions doing.

So to — to see — to see that morally-driven religiously-convinced people want to exercise their political responsibility, I think that is not only at the heart of biblical religion, it is at the heart of American enterprise.

Watch it:

But since most Americans — and Catholics — reject the Church’s teachings against contraception, Dolan is fighting an uphill battle that will persuade only the most ardent Catholic conservatives. It’s a reality he recognizes, telling O’Reilly, “It’s a tough battle because of that and our opponents are very shrewd because they’ve chosen an issue that they know we don’t — we’re not very popular on.” “[E]ven our — even — even very faithful Catholics, Bill, don’t like their bishops or priests telling them how to vote, a person or even on a particular issue.”

Stephen Colbert poked fun at some of the predictions of the Affordable Care Act’s demise before the Supreme Court. “Obamacare is dead!” he declared on Wednesday night’s episode of the Colbert Report. “It was killed by nine people in black robes. I told you there would be death panels.”

After the court adjourned Wednesday, legal and political analysts took to cable news networks to declare the proceedings a “train wreck,” which Colbert one-upped by calling the proceedings “a train wreck that slammed into the Hindenburg, landed on the deck of the Titanic, and then sailed it to see “John Carter.”

Colbert then poked fun at the misguided assumption that if the government can force you to buy health insurance, sooner or later they’ll force you to eat broccoli.

Watch the video:

Across the country, conservatives have been pushing legislation designed to make obtaining an abortion as difficult as possible. In some cases, that means the best option for a woman seeking the procedure is to travel to a state with less restrictive regulations. If some lawmakers get their way, that could become more difficult.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives advanced the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (CIANA) out of the Judiciary Committee by a vote of 20-13. The legislation, which has 158 House co-sponsors, would impose jail sentences on doctors who perform abortions on out-of-state minors if a parent is not present. While the bill’s sponsor Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) claimed the bill was designed to protect the right of parents “to be involved in their children’s lives,” its supporters do not appear to be concerned with protecting teenagers:

The committee rejected several proposed amendments that would have provided exceptions for victims of rape or incest, women facing threats to their health, and grandparents and older siblings trying to accompany their family members to abortion clinics. [...]

Opponents of the bill argue that it fails to consider the extenuating circumstances in which a teen would turn to another adult — such her grandmother or adult sister — for support, and could force young women to instead turn to unsafe alternatives to terminating her pregnancy.

This bill hampers a woman’s right to choose without offering any protections for extreme circumstances. A girl whose parents were “absent or abusive,” according to the Huffington Post, would still need to seek their help in obtaining an abortion, even if she had been raped or was facing a medical emergency.

The bill now heads to the full House for a vote. It remains unclear whether it will face a vote in the Senate, even though a companion bill has been introduced.

–Zachary Bernstein