WashPost opinion page thinks it's neato burrito to get more women on SCOTUS

David Broder at the Washington Post has figured out what I blogged three months ago, that is, you can't get a fully informed decision, reflecting the effect of laws and their interpretation on all Americans, from the Supreme Court until you get more women on the Supreme Court.

Broder:

[When women started entering into journalism in large numbers 20 and 30 years ago, they] changed the culture of the newspaper business and altered the way everyone, male or female, did the work.

The women who came onto the political beat asked candidates questions that would not have occurred to male reporters. They saw the candidates' lives whole, while we were much more likely to deal only with the official part of it.

Eureka! You get a more complete story when you have a more complete representative demographic thinking about the issue and asking questions about it!

Glomarization back in April:

The question here is why we need more women on the Supreme Court rather than settling for more male liberals. Pardon me from pointing out the obvious: men can never join either of those categories [i.e., the two categories women can fall into: women who have had to decide whether to get an abortion, or women who haven't had to make the decision]. But on average, most American women bring at least one child into the world before they leave it themselves (Census.gov PDF). Thus, most American women are now or will eventually be in that first category.

Abortion is an integral part of women's reproductive health care. The right to a safe, legal abortion at any time during a pregnancy should be solely in the hands of the woman and her doctor, just as any other aspect of an American's healthcare decisions should be.

When abortions are outlawed, women will still get abortions, because most women are now or will eventually be in that first category. When abortions are outlawed, no men will die in pools of their own blood on filthy motel room floors (graphic).

And this is why we need more women, not just more liberal men, on the Supreme Court.

A 13-year-old boy (and the adult male judge he may become) will never have to have his bra and panties removed for a strip-search for ibuprofen. During oral argument before the Supreme Court, the male justices could not seem to understand how such a search was any different from changing clothes in the school locker room -- until Justice Ginsberg intervened, reminding them that the girl had had to "stretch the top of [her] pants and shake that out," and though both parties stipulated that the girl wasn't forced to get completely naked, it's one hell of a thin reed to hook your argument on to assert that she wasn't naked because, in the end, you know, she was allowed to keep her panties on when she had to show everybody what was (not) inside them.

Now imagine that oral argument before a SCOTUS with zero women on it.

A man will never, ever have to decide whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy, but almost half of the American population does face that decision during their lifetimes. Unless and until the Supreme Court has more women on it, our country is at a very real risk of going back to an era where that decision involves seriously considering the risk of dying like Gerri Santoro.