Politics & Power Quote by Marc Racicot

“Horrible acts of violence” is doing the heavy lifting here, and that’s the point. Racicot isn’t just staking out a policy position; he’s trying to relocate the debate from contested constitutional terrain to a moral emergency where dissent looks depraved. By labeling “partial-birth abortion” (itself a politically engineered term rather than a medical one) as violence, he collapses procedure, intent, and criminality into one vivid frame. The language primes the audience to experience revulsion before they weigh facts.

The appeal to “a majority of Americans” gives the argument a populist sheen: if most people oppose it, then the case should be closed. But in practice, majority sentiment doesn’t settle rights questions, and Racicot knows that. The line is a pressure tactic aimed at delegitimizing judicial review by making Judge Hamilton appear not merely wrong, but contemptuous of the public and the democratic process.

“Flies in the face of Congress… and President Bush” is a compact civics lesson with an ulterior motive: it casts the judge as an unelected obstacle to the will of the people, conveniently ignoring that courts exist to test whether laws violate constitutional protections. The quote sits squarely in the early-2000s battle over the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, when Republicans sought a politically potent wedge issue and Democrats struggled to defend abortion rights without sounding indifferent to moral gravity.

Intent-wise, this is coalition maintenance: reassure the base, shame opponents, and turn a legal dispute into a referendum on decency. The subtext is clear: if you’re with the judge, you’re against democracy and you’re soft on violence.