Headline from the San Francisco Chronicle:
The courts keep chipping away at abortion.
No, no, no, leftists.
When a law is legislated and a court upholds the law, the court is not chipping away at anything.
The court is merely upholding a law that was democratically voted.
American legislatures have passed very few pro-abortion laws.
When a court decides to strike down a law that was democratically voted, in spite of the will of the people, in spite of previous jurisprudence, that's when the court is effectively legislating from the bench and chipping away at whatever it is that it's undermining.
When abortion was legalized through a court decision, the court was chipping away at fetal rights. The unborn had been legally protected through statute, but abortion advocates got the Court to legislate from the bench.
When you legislate laws that uphold abortion, and the court strikes them down, you can say that the courts are chipping away at abortion.
