E-Mail This Article to a Friend Alito and abortion craziness Plus, a hopeful development in the fight against AIDS

Last week, in this very space, we said that whatever the hearings on Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito turned up, we were sure that simply by virtue of being nominated by President George W. Bush, he was guilty of being a right-wing threat to America.

Now, just in time for this week’s deadline, comes the news that Alito disputes women’s right to abortion.

For our money, that’s about as good and workable a definition of right-wing nut as there is. It’s not, for sure, all-inclusive. Right-wing nuts are opposed to many other things. But it’s a rare right-wing nut who favors women’s right to choose. If you can think of any, send us their names. We’ll be happy to print them.

We all know that the law is a complicated thing. And we all know that joining the Supreme Court is — in some ways — even more important than being elected president of the United States. Presidents come and go, but Supreme Court justices keep deciding the law long after the guy who appointed them has left town. The mainstream press and US senators and right-wing rent-a-pundits who pop up on television to defend whomever Bush nominates let the seriousness of the situation go to their heads. They get so caught up in the high abstractions of the moment, that they lose sight of common sense.

Women in the United States have enjoyed the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy since 1973, when the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. That’s 32 years. Even many lawyers who favor Roe will admit that the court did a bit of stretching when it ruled in favor of women’s reproductive choice. But that’s not the first time it did so. The Court also did a bit of stretching in 1954, when, in Brown v. Board of Education, it ruled that the city of Topeka, Kansas, could not prevent black children from going to school with white children.

Contrary to what the right-wing nuts want us to believe, the US Constitution has slowly evolved and changed. Slavery was — strictly speaking — legal until 1865 and women were not granted the right to vote until 1920. It’s true that the Constitution was amended in those cases. But it’s also true that most of the great advances made during the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s were the result of decisions made by the federal courts — up to and including the Supreme Court.

So how does all this hang together? What exactly are we arguing?

We’re saying that accepting political change takes time. But it happens. Look at it this way: slavery was abolished only 140 years ago; women were granted the right to vote 85 years ago; the end of Jim Crow — meaningful equality for blacks under the law — got under way 51 years ago; and women won the right to control their own bodies 32 years ago.

Anyone who favors a return to slavery, or wants to deny women the right to vote, or aims to re-segregate society would never win appointment to the Supreme Court today. In the same vein, the idea that anyone who wants to deny women the right to control their own bodies and end unwanted pregnancies could be nominated, let alone approved, to sit on the Supreme Court is just as crazy.

That’s among the many reasons why Bush is a menace to America. He wants to go backward. Alito will be one of his tools for retrenchment and reaction. It’s right-wing nuts versus the rest of us, and the nuts have a head start.

FIGHTING AIDS

There is good news from Beacon Hill. The House of Representatives voted to make it legal to buy hypodermic needles over the counter — that is, without a prescription. The measure will curb the spread of HIV-AIDS and blood-borne infections and diseases such as hepatitis C, which are spread through sharing contaminated needles.

Representative Peter J. Koutoujian, a Democrat from suburban Waltham, deserves much of the credit for building the coalition that led to the bill’s passing in the House. But the nature of that coalition is unusually diverse. It includes the district attorneys of Suffolk and Middlesex Counties, Martha Coakley and Daniel Conley, and Boston police chief Kathleen O’Toole — three law-and-order officials not known for their support of liberal social legislation.

The measure is in fact a science-based response to the spread of HIV-AIDS. Forty-seven states have adopted the measure in large part because the evidence shows that making needles legal does not in any way increase drug use, but it does cut down on the use of dirty needles and thus the spread of HIV-AIDS.

The Senate will consider the measure next. And if it passes, as many hope, it will go to Governor Mitt Romney for his signature. He’s on record as opposing the legislation, but there are some indications he might change his mind. If ever there were a numbers-proven way to fight the worst epidemic of our time it is this. Compassion and common sense dictate that Massachusetts become the 48th state in the nation to adopt this measure.

Lives are at stake.