March 29, 1875: Minor v. Happersett Denies Women the Right to Vote

Virginia Minor

March 29, 1875, 150 years ago: The Supreme Court of the United States issues a ruling in the case of Minor v. Happersett. It states that, while women are no less citizens than men are, citizenship does not, by itself, confer a right to vote; therefore, State laws barring women from voting are constitutionally valid.

On October 15, 1872, in St. Louis County, Missouri (outside the City of St. Louis), Virginia Minor, a leader of the women's suffrage movement in Missouri, attempted to register to vote. She was refused, on the grounds that she was a woman. Her husband, Francis Minor, was a lawyer, and, together, they sued the registrar who rejected her application, Reese Happersett.

Happersett is not the villain of the story: He was just doing his job, upholding the law as it then stood. If he had registered Mrs. Minor, they would both have been arrested and put in jail.

The Minors' argument was that the provision of the Constitution of the State of Missouri that guaranteed the right to vote only to male citizens of the State was in violation of the recently-ratified 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed citizenship to all people born in the United States, saying that citizenship included voting rights. They did not argue under the grounds of the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed the right to vote to all citizens.

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled in Happersett's favor, pointing out that the intent of the 14th Amendment was to give the rights of citizenship to former slaves, and had nothing to do with voting rights or gender. The Minors appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But all 9 Justices upheld the Missouri Supreme Court ruling: Chief Justice Morrison Waite (who wrote the official opinion), Nathan Clifford, Noah Swayne, Samuel F. Miller (who should have known better, as the F stood for "Freeman"), David Davis, Stephen J. Field, William Strong, Joseph P. Bradley and Ward Hunt.

In 1876, just 1 year after the case was decided, Reese Happersett died, only 38 years old. I can find no cause, but, medicine being what it was at the time, it could have been any number of things. Virginia Minor lived until 1894, at the age of 70. Her husband, Francis Minor, had died 2 years previously. The last remaining Justice on the Court who had ruled in Minor was Stephen J. Field, who retired in 1897. The last survivor of those Justices was also Field, who lived until 1899.

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing America's female citizens age 21 and up the right to vote, was ratified in 1920, after all the participants had died. In 1971, the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18.

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Kamala Harris for Losing the 2024 Presidential Election

It should have been RoboCop's line: "Your move, creep!"

These are pretty close to what will be the final numbers:

Popular Vote: Donald Trump, Republican, 76.9 million; Kamala Harris, Democratic, 74.4 million; Jill Stein, Green Party, 777,000; Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Independent, 754,000; Chase Oliver, Libertarian, 640,000; others, 388,000.

Percentages of Popular Vote: Trump, 49.97; Harris, 48.36; Stein, 0.50; Kennedy, 0.49; Oliver, 0.42; others, 0.25.

Electoral Votes: Trump, 312; Harris, 226.

States Won: Trump, 31; Harris, 19 plus the District of Columbia.

Harris is honest, while Trump is the biggest liar in the history of American politics.

Harris is a former prosecutor, while Trump is a convicted felon.

Harris prosecuted sex crimes, while Trump is an adjudicated rapist.

Harris is a classic American story, while Trump sold America out to Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Harris accepted the results of the election within 24 hours of the first polls closing, while Trump not only still has not admitted he lost the 2020 election, but he sent 8,000 native-born, home-grown terrorists to attack the U.S. Capitol Building in an attempt to stop the certification of that election.

Harris represented the Administration that cleaned up the economic and foreign-policy messes left... by Trump.

And yet, slightly less than half the voters -- not a majority, but a plurality -- chose Trump.

They believed his lies about immigrants and crime being a problem -- instead himself and his supporters being criminals -- and got scared.

They believed his lies about the economy, and got scared.

We have heard people say Harris was a bad candidate. Bad? Worse than what? A traitor? A convicted felon? A rapist? A sore loser? All of whom are Trump?

What the hell happened?

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Kamala Harris for Losing the 2024 Presidential Election

First, a couple of reasons that didn't make the cut: The Best of the Rest.

Joe Biden. Yes, he did a fantastic job as President, especially given the mess he was left -- by Trump. But he insisted upon running for re-election, despite the fact that he would celebrate his 82nd birthday between the election and the Inauguration.

Had he announced at the beginning of Year 3 that he wasn't running for re-election, Harris could have spent Year 3 and Year 4 not just making her case, but building her case. Joe gave her an opportunity, but he denied her the full extent of the opportunity. She ran for President for 107 days. That used to be enough. It is no longer enough.

I don't like blaming Joe. Politically, he really did do an excellent job as President. Personally, he appeals to me on a level more profound than I can express in a few words. And he did put Kamala on the ticket -- once, and, sort-of, twice -- in the first place. But he does bear some responsibility, so I'm making this a "Best of the Rest."

Donald Trump. In addition to everything else, he is an idiot. He is a 14-year-old boy, with a 14-year-old's desires and interests, trapped in the body of a 78-year-old fat man. He sees things on television, and thus acts as though everything has to be a TV show. And, as 14-year-old boys often do, he acts like a "professional wrestler."

But he has one great talent. It's not for governing, obviously. It's not for business, as we have seen. It's for appealing to people with the same mindset as he has: Grown men who act like teenage boys, who see people not like themselves getting further, and presume that this means they're getting left behind. And he promises them that he will be their President, their hero: "I am your retribution." And they ignore the truth of his previous spectacularly failed term in office, and eat his bullshit up.

Robert Mueller. And...

Merrick Garland. Mueller was the Special Prosecutor that was going to save us from Trump. There was a memo, written on September 24, 1973, during Watergate, by Robert G. Dixon, Jr., then the Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel. In that memo, Dixon wrote that an incumbent President could not be indicted for any crime -- not just by Dixon's employer, the U.S. Department of Justice, but by any prosecutor, at any level. But that memo did not, and still does not, have any force of law.

In his report, Mueller said, "If we had confidence that the President did not clearly commit a crime, we would have said so," and, "While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

A Marine Corps hero of the Vietnam War, Mueller could have been a good lawyer, and done his duty by the law. Instead, he chose to be a "good soldier," and he "followed orders," which let Trump get away with his crimes.

If Mueller had indicted Trump when he issued his report on March 22, 2019, Trump could have been convicted during the 2020 campaign. Certainly, in 2021, after leaving office, and allowing for COVID-related delays. And the Republicans, who crowed so much about "the rule of law" during Bill Clinton's Presidency, would have been forced to choose whether or not to nominate a man in prison for President. Instead, Bob Mueller let us down.

Garland was even worse: The Attorney General acted as if he was terrified of appearing partisan, and acted with all the speed of a snail. He could have indicted Trump the day he took office, on March 11, 2021. He had all the evidence he needed, not just with the Mueller Report, but with Trump's own publicly known actions and public statements. He never issued an indictment.

The reason Garland was available as Biden's Attorney General is that he was appointed to the Supreme Court by Barack Obama in 2016, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to do his constitutional duty, and refused to even hold a hearing on Garland.

In hindsight, maybe it's good that Garland isn't on the Court: He could have been so timid that the conservative Justices might have bullied him into their opinions, turning him into what conservatives call a Justice appointed by a Republican who nevertheless is not conservative enough for them: A "Judas Justice."

Now, the Top 5:

5. Elon Musk. An unrepentant son of apartheid-era South Africa, the apparent richest man in the world, he spent $44 billion for Twitter, which he renamed X, for the purpose of using it to spread propaganda to get Trump elected. In the process, he lost a lot of money, and essentially destroyed the great site that Twitter had been.

But he got the result he wanted: He is now, essentially, the Co-President, even though not one damn person voted for him, not even his biggest fan among Trump voters. He has the power, but not the responsibility. You know, what Trump really wanted. But he had the responsibility, and it crushed him. He said, "No, I don't take responsibility at all."

4. Benedict Joe Hills. Since we are a  long way from the golden age of the American labor movement, I will have to explain. Joseph Hillström, a.k.a. Joe Hill,. was a Swedish-born union organizer and a writer of folk songs, operating in the Rocky Mountain States, who was executed in 1915 for a murder he did not commit. The song "Joe Hill" was written about him in 1936 by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson, and it became an anthem of the American labor movement.

Joe Biden was the 1st President ever to walk a picket line, while Trump is a known hirer of strikebreakers and scabs. So the Rust Belt States, especially Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin -- the 3 States that made the difference for Trump in 2016, and went a long way toward making the difference for Biden in 2020 -- should have gone for Harris, as Biden's stand-in.

But a bunch of white men in labor unions didn't go for Harris. They didn't see her as Biden's stand-in. They didn't see her as Biden's 2nd term. They saw her as a black woman who had nothing to do with labor unions. And so they went with the white man who promised them lower prices, forgetting that he already has a record of crashing the economy and killing their jobs, to say nothing of busting unions in his previous public life.

They betrayed America. They betrayed Biden. They betrayed themselves and their families. They weren't Joe Hills, they were Benedict Arnolds. And they will suffer the consequences in 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028, just as they did in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.

3. College Kids for Hamas. A bunch of young people saw "the Palestinians" as victims, and couldn't bring themselves to vote for Harris, who supported Israel. On this issue, these voters did see Harris as the stand-in for the Israel-supporting President they stupidly called "Genocide Joe."

They bought the propaganda that the Palestinians were the victims, not the bloodthirsty thug terrorists that they actually are. The Palestinians are ruled by Hamas, who don't give a damn about democracy, or their own people. "Genocide"? Hamas' very reason for existence is the attempted genocide of the Jewish people. The Nazis tried to keep it a secret, but Hamas are completely open about it.

Few things disgust me more than liberals who support underdogs, yet see the Palestinians as the underdogs, when the Palestinians are the ones who start the wars against Israel. Every goddamned time. 

So when, on October 7, 2023, Hamas gave Israel an event that, proportionally, was worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined, and Israel retaliated, these young voters sided with the equivalent to Imperial Japan and al-Qaeda, against Israel, America's ally, which did what it had every right to do: Attempt to eliminate the enemy permanently.

You want "Palestine" to be free? Hamas don't. They want a dictatorship, with themselves as the dictators, from the river to the sea. Fuck them. And I do not have sympathy for the Palestinians. They gave us Hamas. To Hell with them.

Young people falling hook, line and sinker for Palestinian propaganda, along with the union vote, may have cost Harris Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That combination definitely cost her Michigan, which, proportionally, has the largest ethnically Arab vote of any State, including New York.

(UPDATE: Early in 2025, I learned the expression "Cosplay Commies." A lot of these "kids" claim to be leftists, yet they got fooled into supporting Hamas, a profoundly conservative Islamic group, as are the Ayatollahs of Iran, the Taliban of Afghanistan, ISIS of Iraq, and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.) 

2. Benedict Swifties. What happened to all those women who supposedly registered to vote at Taylor Swift's concerts? They were supposed to make the difference for Harris. Did they simply not show up? Or did they decide that being white was more important than being female, and vote against their own economic interests, and their own reproductive freedom? 

This selection of Swift as Person of the Year for 2023,

meaning the person who most affected the news in that calendar year,

now looks very dubious, indeed.

Not to mention, against their own heroine's wishes. In an Instagram post on September 10, 2024, Tay-Tay said:

I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris  because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.

As a popular singer from before her time, Don McLean, would have said, "They did not listen. They did not know how. Perhaps they'll listen now."

And the biggest reason of all:

1. The American Media. Hey, when conservatives lose, they blame the media, so why can't liberals?

Let's tell the truth: There is no more "liberal media." The New York Times has not been liberal since 1992, when Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., a.k.a. "Pinch," took over as publisher from his father, Arthur Sr., a.k.a. "Punch." He has let his editorial columnists, especially Maureen Dowd, run roughshod over the Democratic Party. He let Thomas L. Friedman shill for the Iraq War until even he had to admit it was a failure.

These days, in the Times, Maggie Haberman rails against Trump. But if she had told the truth in 2016, about both Trump and Hillary Clinton, Hillary would have won, and Haberman wouldn't have to do it now. Unfortunately, her model for what a New York Times columnist should be turned out to be Dowd, not Anna Quindlen -- who left the Times in 1995.

The Washington Post has not been liberal for about the same time, as Ben Bradlee decided that letting his 3rd wife, Sally Quinn, who despises both Bill and Hillary Clinton, run the paper for him was a good thing.

CBS is no longer liberal: The Tiffany Network showed its true colors when it fired Dan Rather for telling the truth about George W. Bush's military service late in the 2004 Presidential campaign. Even MSNBC has current and former Republicans as half of their hosts.

Conservatives like to call CNN "the Communist News Network." But founder Ted Turner hasn't been involved since 2009 -- and, in 2018, he announced that he had an incapacitating illness that took him out of public life. As of this writing, he is still alive, but hasn't been seen in public in years.

If Turner had still been in charge of CNN in 2015, then, once it looked like Trump was going to run for President, he would have sent journalists to investigate Trump properly, and Trump would have been arrested by the FBI when he got to the bottom of the damn escalator.

Instead, CNN's new corporate overlords gave Trump what amounted to free advertising. They chose him, they chose ratings, they chose money over country. Without CNN, Trump never would have gotten past the New Hampshire Primary.

Trump has, essentially, been running for President for almost 10 years straight. And the media have given him all that free advertising the whole time. In contrast, nothing Harris has ever done is good enough for them. Even though it should have been good enough for everyone: Even without Trump being the most unacceptable candidate for President, ever, Harris should have been good enough, on merit, to be considered a great candidate, no matter who the Republicans had nominated.

But the media treated Trump like a star, and they treated Harris like a party-pooper. Instead of what they should have done, which is tell the truth: Harris is a star, and Trump is a pants-pooper.

When one public figure says one thing, and another public figure says the opposite thing, it is not the media's job to treat both sides as equally worthy of attention. It is the media's job to investigate, and find out which of them has it right, which of them is telling the truth, and then tell the American people that one side is right and the other is wrong -- or, that one is telling the truth, and the other is lying.

The American media is supposed to tell the truth. If they had told the truth about Trump in 2016, we would have been done with him quickly -- politically, if not through the legal system -- and we would now be in the closing days of the Hillary Clinton Administration.

VERDICT: Not Guilty.

Lucy Van Pelt, MAGA Stooge

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving premiered on CBS on November 20, 1973. Again, Lucy Van Pelt, the resident fussbudget of Peanuts, the comic strip written by Charles M. Schulz from 1950 until his death in 2000, is shown pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, as she had been doing in the strip since 1952.

In 2021, having watched the special for around the 20th time, I noticed something for the 1st time. When Peppermint Patty suggests that the kids have their own separate Thanksgiving meal at Charlie Brown's house, Lucy doesn't get invited. Her brother Linus does, and, in the spirit of the holiday, helps Charlie Brown with the "cooking." But Lucy isn't invited. Serves her right. (She doesn't crash the dinner, either.)

I guarantee you, despite once claiming to have been a "New Feminist," Lucy is a MAGA. She's mean. She hits (as she puts it, "slugs") anybody who dares to disagree with her. She bullies her little brother, and mocks his emotional-support object (his security blanket).

She commits fraud, both with her excuses for why she won't pull the football away from Charlie Brown this time, even though she always does, and with her psychiatric practice. She hates dogs, including Snoopy. She has body-shamed Charlie Brown for being bald and Pigpen for his hygiene issue.

And she's just arrogant enough to not only sell out her fellow women, but to believe that being white will protect her from the harm that Trump's policies cause.

In her defense, she does charge only 5 cents for a therapy session. And, unlike Trump, she has never been racist toward Franklin, and has never been homophobic toward Peppermint Patty and Marcie (who, once they got old enough to understand desire, would have been much likelier to be a gay couple than Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie).

January 22, 1973: Roe v. Wade, LBJ Dies, Down Goes Frazier

The Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1973. Top row, left to right:

Lewis Powell, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, William Rehnquist.

Bottom row, left to right: Potter Stewart, William O. Douglas,

Chief Justice Warren Burger, William J. Brennan, Byron White.

January 22, 1973, 50 years ago: The U.S. Supreme Court announces its decision in the case of Jane Roe, et al. v. Henry Wade, District Attorney of Dallas County -- heretoafter referred as Roe v. Wade for short.

It is the most controversial decision the Court has made since Dred Scott v. Sanford in 1857. And it is a story so big that it overshadows 2 other events on the same day: The death of a former President of the United States, and the Heavyweight Championship of the World changing hands on a spectacular knockout.

In 1968, Norma McCorvey, a 21-year-old Dallas resident, became pregnant for the 3rd time. She had given up her 2nd child for adoption willingly, and was tricked into doing the same for her 1st. She was divorced from the father of her 1st child, and had no means to raise a child.

She sought an abortion, but the law of the State of Texas prohibited in nearly all cases. The only exception was if giving birth would endanger the mother's life. She was referred to attorneys Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, who filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court in March 1970, alleging that Texas' abortion laws were unconstitutional.

To keep her identity a secret, McCorvey was listed in court records with the placeholder name Jane Roe. (Legal placeholder names include John Doe, Jane Doe, Richard Roe, and, in this case, Jane Roe.) The defendant was the District Attorney for Dallas County, Henry Wade, previously best known for having successfully prosecuted Jack Ruby, who had murdered Lee Harvey Oswald before Oswald could be tried for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Three months after filing the suit, on June 2, 1970, Norma McCorvey gave birth to her 3rd child, a girl, and put her up for adoption. A few months later, a 3-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas heard the case, and ruled in her favor. Crawford Martin, the Attorney General of the State of Texas, appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It took until January 22, 1973 for the High Court to issue a ruling. It was 7-2 in McCorvey's favor. The reasoning was that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides a "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion.

However, it also ruled that this right is not absolute, and tied the degree of any State's regulation to the trimester of pregnancy which is to be aborted. In other words, the Court provided a loophole which gave anti-abortion activists hope that, one day, the Roe v. Wade decision might be overturned.

The decision was written by Justice Harry Blackmun, who became, to anti-abortion activists, the most hated Justice in the Court's history. He was joined by Chief Justice Warren Burger, and Justices William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan, Potter Stewart, Thurgood Marshall and Lewis Powell.

Dissenting were Justices Byron White and William Rehnquist. Both were Catholic -- but so was Brennan, who supported the aforementioned citation of a right to privacy.

Appointed by Democratic Presidents: Douglas by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, White by John F. Kennedy in 1962, and Marshall by Lyndon Johnson in 1967. The Democrats, ever since, have been the Party favoring abortion rights, but White did not vote that way.

Appointed by Republican Presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower had appointed Brennan in 1956, and Stewart 1958; while the current President, Richard Nixon, had appointed Burger in 1969, Blackmun in 1970, and Powell and Rehnquist in 1972.

However, Brennan was a Democrat, whom Eisenhower had appointed as a gesture of bipartisanship. Of the other 5, only Rehnquist ruled against the right to an abortion. In 1986, when Burger retired as Chief Justice, President Ronald Reagan rewarded Rehnquist by promoting him to the Chief's chair.

Control of the Supreme Court has been seen as the anti-abortion movement's way of getting Roe overturned. Which is why, in 2016, when hard-core anti-abortion Justice Antonin Scalia died, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell prevented President Barack Obama's appointee to the seat, Merrick Garland, from even getting a hearing in the Senate.

It was also why evangelical "Christian" Republicans, so often hypocritical, were willing to accept Donald Trump, a pathological liar, a man married 3 times and divorced twice, a serial adulterer, a confessor to serial sexual assault, and a man whose words and actions compare very poorly with those of Jesus of Nazareth, as the Republican nominee for President, because they knew he would appoint Justices to the Court that would be acceptable to McConnell, and thus acceptable to them. This allowed the Scalia seat to remain vacant until Trump took office, enabling him to appoint Neil Gorsuch to the seat.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the "swing vote" on cases, including the biggest challenge to Roe to that point, Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, surprisingly retired in 2018, and Trump appointed Brett Kavanaugh as his replacement, an alcoholic with, like Trump himself, a record of sexual assault and hatred of women.

And when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in office in 2020, before Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer could do anything about it, McConnell rushed the confirmation of Trump's appointee, Amy Comey Barrett, through the Senate, giving the Court a 6-3 conservative majority that, Court-watchers believed, would overturn Roe when they reached a decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. 

Sure enough, that decision came on June 24, and it did overturn Roe. This angered American women so much that the predicted "Red Wave" of votes that was going to give the Republicans overwhelming control of both houses of Congress was counteracted by "Roevember." The result was that the Republicans did regain control of the House of Representatives, but with a majority of only 4 votes; and the Democrats actually gained a seat in the Senate.

After Roe v. Wade, Henry Wade did not see his reputation take a hit. Liberals didn't blame him for a law in place well before he ever took office, and conservatives did not hold it against him that he lost the case. He retired as District Attorney in 1987, after 36 years, and died in 2001.

Despite having slept around with men, Norma McCorvey more often identified as a lesbian, having spent most of her adult life with a single life-partner, Connie Gonzales, but constantly cheating on her. In 1989, she came forward as Jane Roe, and participated in abortion-rights rallies.

Then, in 1995, she switched sides, becoming an evangelical Catholic -- at least, officially -- and attending anti-abortion rallies. She wrote 2 books, 1 while on each side of the debate, and both of which were exposed for containing lies. She was never really an asset to either side. Apparently, the only thing she truly believed in was publicity.

In 2021, the baby that "Jane Roe" didn't want came forward for an article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine, and a subsequent book by Joshua Prager, The Family Roe. (Prager had gained the cooperation of McCorvey's 1st 2 children and her ex-partner.) 

Shelley Lynn Thornton grew up in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, Texas, and later in the Seattle suburb of Kent, Washington, knowing that she was adopted and that she had 2 half-sisters living elsewhere. Shortly before her 19th birthday, she was told -- by a "reporter" for the National Enquirer -- who her birth mother was.

She freaked out. Not because she now knew that her birth mother wanted to end her life. But because, even at her age, she knew that both the Enquirer and the right-to-life movement would want to use her. In one of the few decent things the Enquirer has ever done, it kept Shelley's name out of the printed story.

In 1991, Shelley herself became pregnant. She was opposed to abortion, but, to her, "pro-life" meant the fanatics who terrorized women seeking a choice, and blew up clinics, killing people and making themselves hypocrites, and she wanted nothing to do with that label. She didn't want the "Right to Life" movement to use her in any way.

Unlike her mother, she had a supportive boyfriend, and they got married before their son was born. They moved to Tucson, Arizona, and added 2 daughters. She met both of her half-sisters, and got along well with them. But, despite 2 difficult phone calls, years apart, Shelley Thornton never met Norma McCorvey face-to-face.

McCorvey died on February 18, 2017, in the Houston suburb of Katy, Texas, of heart failure, at age 69. In what turned out to be a final interview, what abortion rights activists have called a "deathbed confession," she said she was paid to switch to the anti-abortion side: "I was the big fish. I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money, and they'd put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say. That's what I’d say." Making her, I suppose, the Anakin Skywalker of abortion politics.

However unreliable a narrator she may have been, I'll let her have the last word: "If a young woman wants to have an abortion, that's no skin off my ass. That’s why they call it 'choice.'"

Of the 9 Justices on the Court for Roe v. Wade, Rehnquist was the last one on the Court, dying in office in 2005. The last one who voted for reproductive rights was Harry Blackmun, who retired in 1994.

*

January 22, 1973 was a Monday. And Norma McCorvey was not the only Texas resident in the news that day. Former President Lyndon B. Johnson suffered a heart attack at his LBJ Ranch outside Johnson City. (The city was named for his grandfather, and the closest big city is Austin.) He had a private plane on the Ranch, and Secret Service agents loaded him onto it. He was flown to Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, outside San Antonio, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.

The last known photo

He was 64, and had spent the last 4 years watching Nixon pick apart at his legacy. Actually, while Nixon did dismantle some "Great Society" programs, he kept some, and strengthened others.

That night, at the National Stadium (now named Independence Park) in Kingston, Jamaica, Joe Frazier defended the Heavyweight Championship of the World. His opponent was George Foreman, from Houston. Both men were Olympic Gold Medalists: Frazier in Tokyo in 1964, Foreman in Mexico City in 1968. Both men were undefeated as professionals: Frazier was 29-0, and Foreman, despite being 5 years younger, was 37-0.

In what was known as the Sunshine Showdown (despite taking place at night), Foreman dominated from the opening bell. The rule mandating the fight be ended in the event of 3 knockdowns in 1 round was waived for this fight. Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali's trainer, who had also worked with Foreman, was seated at ringside, and, halfway through the 1st round, could be heard on ABC Sports' broadcast yelling, "Frazier's hurt!"

Sitting next to Dundee, Howard Cosell tried to tell the ABC audience what Dundee had said, but couldn't finish it, because Foreman delivered a knockdown blow: "Angie Dundee, Ali's trainer, right next to me, is saying it. You may hear it... Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! The Heavyweight Champion is taking the mandatory 8-count, and Foreman is as poised as can be in a neutral corner!"

Frazier got up at the count of 2, but took the 8-count, and resumed. With 16 seconds left in the 1st round, Foreman knocked Frazier down again. He got up. Just before the bell rang to end the round, Foreman knocked Frazier down for a 3rd time. There was no "saving by the bell": Had Frazier not gotten up, it would have been over then.

It should have been over then. Instead, referee Arthur Mercante, who had refereed the 1st Ali-Frazier fight in 1971, let the 2nd round begin. Frazier was knocked down a 4th time. Mercante didn't stop it. Frazier was knocked down a 5th time. Mercante didn't stop it. Frazier was knocked down a 6th time. Only then did Mercante stop it. Foreman was the Champion.

In his next fight, on September 1 at Budokan in Tokyo, Japan, Foreman knocked Puerto Rican fighter José "King" Roman out in the 1st round. Next up, on March 26, 1974 in Caracas, Venezuela, Foreman knocked Ken Norton out in the 2nd round.

Roman had never fought Ali. But, now, Foreman had destroyed the only 2 men to defeat Ali as professionals. Yet Ali wanted to fight him to regain the title. People were afraid that Foreman would badly hurt Ali, maybe even kill him. Instead, Ali knocked Foreman out in the 8th round, and proved that he was, indeed, what he had been saying he was: "The Greatest of All Tiiiiiiiime!"

Foreman retired in 1977, became a minister, and, in 1987, returned to boxing to raise money for his church. Discovering that he still had some punching power, he kept at it. He fought Evander Holyfield for the title in 1991, and while he didn't come close to winning, he went the distance and didn't get hurt.

Lots of people, myself included, thought he had proven his point, and that he should stop before he did get hurt. He didn't. In 1994, with the title now in the hands of Michael Moorer, Foreman knocked Moorer out, and, at 45, became the oldest Heavyweight Champion of the World ever.