National Review Online blogger Matthew J. Franck published a guest blog post by Southern Illinois University professor Robert Clinton arguing that by supporting Roe v. Wade, “the strongest elements of the Democratic Party” belong to the “Party of Death.” Comparing Roe to the notorious Supreme Court Dred Scott decision, Clinton added: “we seem to be approaching a situation of the kind that obtained shortly before the Civil War, in which a flawed Supreme Court decision was followed by an unbridgeable congressional divide and governmental paralysis.”

While Clinton stated that he “would hardly venture so far as to predict another civil war,” he then added: “the circumstances and the history cannot help but give one pause.”

From a post on the National Review Online's Bench Memos blog:

The fact that the budget dispute resolved last night, threatening a partial shutdown of the national government, came down to the funding of Planned Parenthood, is a striking confirmation of Ramesh Ponnuru's description of the strongest elements of the Democratic Party as belonging to the “Party of Death.”

[...]

If the decision whether to keep the government functioning at full strength boils down to resolution of a controversy over abortion, then we seem to be approaching a situation of the kind that obtained shortly before the Civil War, in which a flawed Supreme Court decision was followed by an unbridgeable congressional divide and governmental paralysis. As Hadley Arkes suggested around the time of the Bork hearings, Dred Scott and Roe are cut from the same cloth. While I would hardly venture so far as to predict another civil war, the circumstances and the history cannot help but give one pause.