Seeking the power of a constitutional amendment without the bother of having to pass an actual amendment, presidential candidate Kamala Harris has a new plan for mostly Southern states such as Alabama and Georgia, whose voters oppose abortion and whose elected representatives have moved to limit it.  Here's what her own website says:

Kamala Harris believes we need to fight back and block these dangerous and deadly laws before they take effect. That’s exactly what she intends to do as president. Similar to the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act, Harris will require, for the first time, that states and localities with a history of violating Roe v. Wade obtain approval from her Department of Justice before any abortion law or practice can take effect.

Seems the right to kill a kicking and squirming baby is now a civil right, and any move to stop the outrage is not at all different from a Jim Crow law, a civil rights offense, and therefore subjects an entire state and all its voters to DoJ supervision.  And what a coincidence: it's the Southern states she is targeting.  Seems the South just can't be punished enough.

Limiting abortion, see, is a crime.

It's mind-boggling in its contempt for voter sentiment, the democratic republicanism of states, the right to choose one's own representatives democratically, and a creepy extension of central planning from the top.

Not only that, but it's unconstitutional, because it's based on the Voting Rights Act, which was thrown out as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.  That doesn't seem to bother Harris; she's replacing it with this setup now, to pre-empt all pro-life laws from ever happening without her permission, which is a creepy Robespierrian or Vyshinsky-an thing for a former prosecutor. 

There's even a poison pill in her proposed measure to tie the hands of a, heaven forbid, pro-life administration — which she euphemizes as "guard rails."

It's about as overweening a power grab as any ever proposed, and it's creepy in that it singles out specific states — mostly Southern ones — since they are oh, so guilty of everything in her mind.  Way to win the Sun Belt, Kams.

Something like this won't stand up to any Supreme Court challenge because it's just a naked power grab, and the precedent is already set with the court's ending of the Voting Rights Act, but none of this is likely to stop Harris.  She's all in for making herself dictator on abortion, and her shameless proposal is proof.  With that the case, it's up to voters to stop her and vote for almost anyone but her.

Image credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, with minor modification by Monica Showalter, CC BY-SA 2.0.