So, in essence, the Biden White House is trying to sneak in a provision that would essentially require employers to provide accommodations for women seeking to have abortions – the exact opposite of what the measure was intended to accomplish.

The Government of Sweden has disclosed that it remains steadfast in supporting pro-choice activists and funding campaigns that advocate for the legalization of abortion in Liberia even though it “respects the views of religious leaders” who oppose abortion.

The Swedish position, which was made known by Ambassador Urban Sjöström, comes a few days after members of Liberia’s Religious Council strongly criticized the Swedish Embassy in Liberia for funding campaigns that push for the legalization of abortion in Liberia.

The Council’s remarks comes as the Senate is currently debating an amendment to the Public Health Law to make abortion legal after coming under intense pressure from the Amplifying Rights Network, a coalition of ten civil society organizations, which is supported by the Swedish government and has been pushing and holding campaigns for decriminalization of abortion. //

Abortion is illegal in Liberia as per the current law and, on the moral front, is considered a sin by the majority of Liberians who identify as Christians and Muslims. By law, it is prohibited in all forms, with a few exceptional cases such as when the life or health of the mother is at risk. The law affirms the views of many religious leaders and is reflective of the predominant ethnic and cultural values within the country.

However, abortion rights advocates, including the Amplifying Rights Network, argue that legalization is necessary for women’s reproductive rights and to reduce maternal mortality rates in the country. They believe that criminalizing abortion puts women’s lives at risk as the practice never gets stopped.

The Amplifying Rights Network’s claims are supported by a recent report by Clinton Health Access Initiative and partners, in which it was revealed that more than 38,000 illegal abortions were performed in 2021 alone. //

Yet, religious leaders and critics disagree and argue that legalizing abortion undermines the sanctity of life and contradicts religious and moral teachings. A key concern for many religious leaders is the focus solely on the perceived benefits without fully considering the social and moral implications.

In their view, the emphasis should be on improving healthcare services to combat maternal mortality rates, not abortion. They argue that Liberia is a country of morals; therefore legalizing abortion will drive the country into a dark era. //

Meanwhile, Sweden is the second largest bilateral donor to Liberia and supports Liberia in democracy, human rights, gender equality and the rule of law; peaceful and inclusive societies; inclusive economic growth and environment, climate change, and the use of natural resources.

Kansans head to the polls Tuesday to vote on the proposed “Value Them Both” constitutional amendment that seeks to overturn the Kansas Supreme Court’s decision in Hodes & Nauser v. Schmidt that declared that the state constitution guarantees a “fundamental right to abortion.” Many Kansans may not realize, however, that the votes they cast on Tuesday may have been heavily influenced by out-of-state abortion apologists who contributed a whopping 71 percent of the $6.54 million spent by the lead group campaigning against the amendment. //

Kansas voters may not recognize the outside influences in play, however, but if they take the time to actually read the proposed amendment before marking their ballots tomorrow, they’ll realize that the “no” side of the debate has been lying to them for the last year-and-a-half. Or Kansas voters can instead learn the truth the hard way when, once the amendment has been defeated, abortion activists turn to the state courts to start striking the current abortion regulations on the books and obtain taxpayer-funded abortion. Conservative Kansans will then learn what so-called “abortion access” really means.

After years of dragging down Trump-supporting evangelicals — voters who made a careful calculation and helped install the president who confirmed three conservative Supreme Court justices that made up the Dobbs majority — there wasn’t much Moore could have said but mea culpa.

Oh, but never underestimate the hubris of an ear-tickled right-wing defector, especially one with a track record like Moore. In his social media absence, he came up with something to say that didn’t include admitting error: Nope, overturning a deadly precedent that ruled for half a century and resulted in more than 63 million lives lost doesn’t vindicate conservative Trump voters. //

Moore has completely bought into the framing of left-wing media and other cut-throat opponents of conservatives, especially as it relates to Trump as a “disruptive figure.”

You can see this in the above passage, with phrases like “the cost of hitching the pro-life movement to a figure such as this.” And Moore invokes the deeply flawed analysis of the likes of David French and even John Piper when he singles out Trump’s “character,” as if we can dispense with that character analysis when it comes to a pro-abortion, pro-transgender opponent who helped concoct a yearslong hoax to cheat her way into the presidency and regards half the country as deplorable.

This single point wouldn’t be proof positive of Moore’s media trance, but there’s much more evidence than that spanning left-wing talking points outside the abortion realm. During just this one event, Moore parroted the media’s infamous Charlottesville lie. He promoted the leftist worldview that everything in life connects to skin color (invoking The Bulwark’s founder Charlie Sykes). He repeated the media’s gaslighting that the “great replacement theory” is a right-wing conspiracy rather than an explicit Democrat strategy, and with a straight face, he said: “…The Jan. 6 Committee hearings are so important.” //

Some of the people who have been the most own-the-libs-ish in the way that they’re speaking are the people who’ve been the least involved in the actual trenches of the pro-life movement.

Wow, he’s got us all figured out. We morally stained Trump voters celebrating the untold lives that will be saved in post-Roe America — a victory we thought we might never see in our lifetimes — are just trying to own the libs. No regard for neighbor here and certainly no real pro-life work. //

If you can’t talk about a massive blow to a death-culture industry that exploits women and murders innocents without uttering, “but Trump…” and putting down fellow pro-life Christians who don’t share your politics, perhaps you’re confused on who exactly your neighbor is.

And if you can’t be a “triumphalist” about the biggest pro-life victory in half a century, are you really trying to “persuade [your] neighbors of this position,” or are you trying to persuade the world that hates you that you’re not one of those Christians? //

In refusing to credit Trump for the judicial appointments that made overturning Roe possible, Russell Moore doesn’t understand that:
• The Lord sometimes works in mysterious ways.
• That, unless he is without sin, he has no right to cast stones at the “vulgar” Donald.
• To cite one of many historical examples, Lincoln won the Civil War by overlooking General Grant’s penchant for overdrinking because, unlike the general’s predecessors, he fought to win. Or would Moore have preferred that the South had either won the Civil War, or had succeeded in forming a separate nation, preserving slavery?
• The battle to eventually eliminate abortion is literally as life-and-death, if not moreso (with 63 million fatalities, in just one nation), than any war which has ever been fought, or any government sponsored massacre which has ever occurred..

Leo O'Malley
@LeoTOMalley
·
Follow
New polling data out on #Dobbs:

1) Overturning #RoeVsWade: 45% Support/55% Oppose

2) 37% would ban abortion entirely w/ only rape and incest exceptions

3) 49% support abortion ban after 6 wks

4) 72%!! support abortion ban after 15wks

5) Only 10% support Dem. position of allowing abortion up until birth.

6) 44% say it is better for states to set abortion standards; 31% say Congress; and 25% say #SCOTUS

7) 63% say #SCOTUS is legitimate; 59% say it is wrong for Dems to call #SCOTUS illegitimate

8) 36% say #Dobbs makes it more likely they will vote GOP in '22; 36% say more likely to vote for Dem.; 29% no difference

https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/HHP_June2022_KeyResults.pdf
3:04 PM · Jul 4, 2022 //

These results are just mind-numbing because they are nothing but a ball of contradictions. 55 percent do not approve of the overturning of Roe. Yet, 44 percent, a plurality, believe that states should be able to make their own laws regarding abortion.

But the biggest “huh” moment comes when you see that 72 percent (!) of Americans believe that abortion should be banned after 15 weeks. Guess that that requires? The overturning of Roe (and Casey). //

So are Americans just really dumb? Or are they being fed so much misinformation that they don’t even know that they hold contradictory positions? I think the answer is mostly the latter. The media have been relentless in conflating the ending of Roe with a supposed federal ban on abortion that simply doesn’t exist. Pollsters also often choose to make their questions on the specific court decisions as inflammatory as possible.

Still, what we are seeing even in the contradictions of this poll is that Americans’ true feelings are far more in line with the Republican position than the Democrat position.

For those who still think aborting special needs babies is necessary in order to spare them, and the parents, burden, pain, and difficulty, Hartman had this to say:

Here’s what I can tell you: Many times people speak about special needs as being a negative and I’ve seen it as nothing but a positive. My daughter and I are much closer than we would have ever been because of her special needs. Morgan is someone who has taught in a very positive way not just my wife and myself and our family, but also other people about the importance of life.

And because Morgan was the spark that inspired Gordon Hartman to create a world where she belonged, other special needs children and their families now have a place of belonging and welcome too.

a few things were obvious about Trump as a candidate and president.

First, he didn’t have strong political beliefs. Many, including one former writer here a RedState, used to get what seemed to be sexual gratification from calling Trump a “New York liberal.” But, as a salesman, he knew what was important to those who voted for them. To this day, I’m not terribly sure what Trump believes, but I’m also sure that it doesn’t matter.

Second, he didn’t hold Americans in “fly over country” in contempt. I think Trump connected with conservative Americans in a way that no candidate since Ronald Reagan has managed to do because he wasn’t laughing at us to his rich liberal buddies at cocktail parties.

Third, in the words of my Old Man, “ya dance with them what brung ya.” When Trump was sworn in, he had a choice to make. He could stay true to the people who voted for him or yield to the siren call of Washington’s social life. In a singular act of political courage, he chose loyalty to his supporters.

One of those signs of loyalty was Trump’s overt embrace of the Pro-Life Movement. I’m not sure that Trump had ever spent ten consecutive seconds thinking about the issue of abortion. From his life and lifestyle, I’d not be surprised to find that he didn’t have a personal problem with this horrific practice. Unlike President George W. Bush, whom I admired, Trump was not ashamed of us. President Trump became the first president to personally appear at the March for Life rally since its inception in 1974. Neither Reagan nor Bush, all of whom talked big talk about being pro-life, ever made an appearance, but a New York City playboy cared enough to show up. When it came time to appoint justices, Trump delivered three whose records indicated they were pro-life and conservative.

Unsurprisingly, people who made a career out of being “Never Trump” are trying to rewrite history to take credit for something that happened despite their best efforts. //

A pause here for a brief fact check. The famous lists of possible Supreme Court nominees were developed inside the Trump White House by a team led by Don McGahn. The Federalist Society executive vice president Leonard Leo was an adviser. The selections were not by any stretch of the imagination “delegated.” In fact, it was Conservative, Inc. insiders who howled as loudly as the Washington Post editorial board about how the proposed justices would scare moderate voters. //

Sure, George W. Bush gave us Samuel Alito. But, do you know who else he gave us? John Roberts. Roberts is the guy whose concurrence in Dobbs tells the majority that included all three Trump-appointed justices that they were completely wrong in their decision. In a weird way, we are lucky to have John Roberts. We were saved from much worse because Bush couldn’t find enough inbred senators willing to foist Harriet Miers off on us. I agree that Clarence Thomas is a treasure. But do you know who else George H. W. Bush put on the bench? David Souter. Souter wrote the opinion in Casey that sought to forever lock in abortion as a Constitutional right. He voted with the majority in the Lawrence vs. Texas decision that changed or placid “slouching towards Gomorrah” posture into the Usain Bolt-style sprint that put us on the glide path to codifying a cheap simulacrum of actual marriage as the law of the land. //

The Gospel Matthew (21:28-32) contains the Parable of the Two Sons. The story is that a father asks his two sons to go work in the vineyard. One tells his father “no,” but then relents and goes off to work. The other tells his father, “yes,’ and doesn’t go. The question is, who actually did their father’s will? I’m not trying to make a theological argument defending Trump; I am merely using this well-known (at least I hope) Bible reading as a point of departure for a comparison. Trump spent his entire life never giving much thought to governance. Yet once he was president, he governed more conservatively than any president in the past 20 years. Not only on Life but the economy, neutering Iran, the Abraham Accords, and, I’d contend, bullying the freeloaders in NATO into starting to meet their obligations. In essence, he said “no” at first but ended up doing the hard work in the vineyard.

On the other hand, we had “conservatives” who were elected, pledging to defend life. When it came down to nut-cutting time, they still agreed to fund Planned Parenthood, ignore the Pro-Life Movement outside of election year photo-ops, and appointed judges who, to this day, continue to support abortion and anything else the administrative state desires. They are the ones who said “yes,” and decided they liked being invited to the cool parties and maybe moving out of the conservative punditry ghetto more than fighting for causes. So who was actually the more conservative?

Donald Trump won in 2016. He won because he likes to win and because he knows if you aren’t a winner, you are the other thing…that would be a loser. //

There is a place inside the conservative tent for thinkers as well as for doers. What there isn’t a place for are people who fought tooth and nail to keep abortion legal by supporting Hillary Clinton…and Joe Biden…and then claim the Dobbs victory for themselves and their fellow travelers because they had wonderful thoughts and wrote erudite articles.

The same points keep getting made in the debate on abortion. Here are the many reasons the usual points in favor of abortion are wrong. //

Abortion is a deeply divisive issue, and about half of Americans consider themselves pro-life and half call themselves pro-choice. Overturning Roe will not end abortion rights but return the issue to the states, allowing for a more democratic process — the debate will continue, but the truth remains the same.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Roe was as shameful as its decision in Dred Scott — and for the same reason. //

The end of Roe v. Wade is perhaps the greatest political and cultural event in a generation. It will change American politics forever, and — what’s more important — it will save the lives of countless unborn children. The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs is a great victory for the U.S. Constitution, for the American people, and for justice and truth and the common good.

It is also a turning point. We should now expect Democrats and the left to call more explicitly for violence, initially against places like crisis pregnancy centers and Catholic churches, as we have already seen, and eventually against ordinary people who disagree with them. We should expect not just calls for physical attacks against the justices in the Dobbs majority, but, as we have also already seen, attempts to carry out such attacks.

This violence will likely be accompanied by rhetoric that more explicitly posits abortion not just as a positive good — “shout your abortion” — but a necessary one for women to enjoy their full rights as citizens under the Constitution. The argument, already gaining steam in public discourse, is that without a constitutional right to kill the unborn, women are relegated to a kind of second-class status, stripped of their full humanity. This rhetoric will be used in part as a justification for violence, but it also reflects the actual views of Democrats and the left on abortion. //

Southern Democrats believed the denial of all rights to black people — and indeed the denial of their personhood — was integral to what they understood to be their constitutionally protected rights, without which they would cease to be citizens with equal rights as their northern counterparts.

The exact same thing can be said of today’s pro-abortion Democrats. They believe that the denial of all rights to the unborn is integral to what they understand to be women’s constitutionally protected rights, without which they will cease to be citizens with equal rights as their male counterparts. If women are not allowed to kill their unborn babies, they will be stripped of their full humanity, just as stripping slavery from southern whites meant, to them, stripping full humanity from white people.

The Dobbs decision and the end of Roe have exposed the Democrat view of the Constitution for what it is: not, as Frederick Douglass called it, “a glorious liberty document,” but a slave Constitution that relies for its operation on the total subjugation, indeed the extermination, of an entire class of people whose very humanity must be denied for the rights of women to be vindicated.

We should rejoice in the end of Roe, but we should also be realistic about what lies ahead. It took a civil war and three constitutional amendments to correct the Supreme Court’s error in Dred Scott. This time it took 60 million unborn dead before the Supreme Court corrected the error of Roe.

In the coming days and weeks, expect Democrats to sound the same notes of secession their forebears sounded. A constitutional order that vindicates the rights of the unborn is not a constitutional order they want to be a part of. We will hear the same arguments we heard in the 1850s and 60s, but instead of objecting to the emancipation of black Americans they will object to the emancipation of the unborn. Understand what this means. The last time Democrats openly made these kind of arguments, war soon followed.

After 49 years of legal arguments, protests and political battles over the composition of the Supreme Court, the court has finally overturned Roe v. Wade.

No matter how you feel about abortion, this should be welcomed as a healthy development for American democracy and for the rule of written law made by the people’s representatives. Roe was a legal mistake that played a large role in driving our national politics crazy. Now the democratic process gets to decide what happens to abortion. //

The Supreme Court’s job is to read the law, not write it. Nothing in the Constitution mentions abortion even indirectly, and nobody before the 1970s thought the Constitution made abortion legal. At the time, even pro-abortion legal scholars thought Roe was shoddy. Its trimester framework reads more like a piece of legislation than like judicial reasoning, yet it foreclosed the democratic process from the kinds of compromises and changes over time that usually go into popularly enacted laws. //

The undemocratic nature of Roe produced a backlash that left the pro-life movement in politics much stronger than it had been in 1973. It revolutionized how political conservatives thought about constitutional law. It mobilized opposing factions in national elections, polarized along religious and cultural lines. It turned Supreme Court nominations into a circus. It occasionally triggered violence.

These absolute lunatics want Joe Biden to sign an executive order authorizing the use of federal buildings to perform abortions, not just in states where abortion is permitted, which is bad enough, but as a way to perform abortions in states that choose to outlaw most or all abortions.

Doing that would be outright dangerous. Do you want mass unrest? Because you get it by having the federal government, by decree of a single man, entering into red states to kill babies with taxpayer dollars. There’s a reason the Hyde Amendment exists, and it’s to diffuse stuff like this. Democrats don’t care, though. They are all in on hacking up kids in the womb, and they are obviously willing to do just about anything to ensure the practice continues.

It is hard for me to even write articles like this because the amount of murderous evil being perpetrated is almost too much to discuss without losing it. It’s impossible to conceive how anyone could be so obsessed with killing unborn babies that they’d actually propose illegally weaponizing the federal government and its agencies to override the will of the people in the states.

Besides, state laws are still laws. The federal government can not simply enter into a state and do whatever it wants contrary to the laws in those states. That includes killing people, unborn or otherwise. An executive order does not grant the power to ignore the Supreme Court and override laws that protect life. Any federal employees that try to follow such an order could be and should be arrested and charged.

Democrats are tearing this country apart. Something has to give because this kind of “anything goes to make sure I get what I want” attitude is destructive and treacherous.

For decades, the Supreme Court’s decision to hijack the abortion question blunted the moral impetus for secular and religious leaders alike. It allowed for a dishonest debate, and for the left to claim our elected representatives alone have jurisdiction over matters of life and death, while rarely exercising this jurisdiction.

For decades, from both the church pulpit and the bully pulpit, it allowed for cowardice. Soon that may be ending. It might not make for a less contentious time in American life, but it will sure make for a more honest one.

The flaws of an old hypothetical also illuminate the weakness of contemporary arguments for abortion grounded on claims of bodily autonomy.

Judith Jarvis Thompson’s hypothetical: If you were kidnapped and used as a life-support system for an ailing virtuoso, would you have the right to disconnect him? Nonetheless, its argument from autonomy is, if anything, now more central to the case for abortion.

This emphasis is largely a byproduct of the ultrasound pictures on our fridges and social media feeds. It is difficult to dismiss human lives in utero as worthless clumps of cells when you can count their fingers and look at their faces. So abortion supporters increasingly echo Thompson’s claim that no one should be compelled to sustain another person, whether violinist or fetus. Thus, a woman has an absolute right to violently end the human life developing in her womb. //

The violinist scenario is a hypothetical freak of medicine, whereas pregnancy is the normal reality of human reproduction. This normalcy, in turn, reminds us that we were all once utterly dependent in utero, and that most of us will be dependent again, whether from illness, injury, or old age. In short, we are all the violinist.

Human solidarity recognizes this shared dependence. Ignoring it, or trying to avoid it, has been a great failure of the liberal political tradition. Liberal discourse privileges independent, rational adults (or at least adults who imagine themselves such). But independent, rational adults don’t need solidarity, they need a non-aggression pact and mechanisms for conflict resolution—which is what classical liberal theorists such as John Locke sought to provide. //

Abortion’s dissolution of family solidarity poisons everything. Abortion culture encourages men and women to use each other rather than to love each other. Abortion culture teaches us to treat children as expensive commodities, rather than welcoming them as blessings. //

Family requires solidarity, which abortion destroys, both directly by violently ending unborn lives and indirectly through the culture this enables and encourages. And when solidarity decays within family life, it will not endure socially or politically.

This is why the promises of abortion advocates have proven false. Thompson’s weird hypothetical invites us to disconnect the violinist, but abortion disconnects all of us from the love and solidarity that enable genuine human flourishing.

As to the specific things Harrison Warren advocates, they are primarily the same tired socialist proposals that were in vogue before LBJ’s Great Society; their objective is the infantilization of single mothers and the funding of a massive social service bureaucracy. We know that the government programs that attempt to implement these plans don’t produce anything but more poverty and more bureaucrats. What is more disturbing is that she is essentially pushing the same slander that we on the pro-life side have heard from the pro-aborts for years, that is, that we don’t care about the baby after it is born.

What is missing from Harrison Warren’s critique?

Family, for one. At no point does she encourage marriage or not banging everything in sight. Men are marginalized in our society. They earn fewer than half of all college degrees.

They are more likely to drop out of school, participate in the workforce, use drugs, and be involved in serious crimes.

The focus on “empowering economically disadvantaged women” totally misses the cultural genocide being wrought on our young men. If it “take two to tango,” maybe being married to a man who has earning ability is a better solution for father, mother, and child than being enrolled in a government program that will penalize the woman through loss of entitlements, if she does get married or improves her economic status. Maybe, hear me out, a committed relationship is better socially, economically, and psychologically than a hook-up app. Perhaps addressing the “demand” part of the equation instead of monomaniacally focusing on the “supply” issue is in order. //

Evangelizing is hard work, but the fact is that without some religious foundation, without changing hearts, trying to change the culture is a lost cause. I was stunned that a priest (even an Anglican) could approach an issue so profoundly intertwined with orthodox Christianity as abortion and not call for greater involvement by churches in assisting pregnant women. Totally anecdotal, but my experience is that those churches with the most robust pro-life ministries are also very likely to be actively involved in helping pregnant women in all aspects.

Perhaps making common cause with pro-aborts is a really, really stupid idea. Social movements are subject to the Iron Law of Bureaucracy, the same as any government agency. That law is “in any bureaucratic organization; there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.” I don’t have to tell you in which category you’d find the pro-aborts and where those folks who’ve spent decades on the picket lines would be. Inviting pro-aborts into the pro-life movement, unless they’ve had an “Abby Johnson moment,” serves no useful purpose.

It is said that every cause starts out as a movement, then it becomes a business, and finally, a grift. Since Roe became law, the pro-life movement has stayed true to its founding vision (with some exceptions). There is a lot of work to be done, but, unlike just a year ago, you can now visualize a time when abortion will be illegal in most states, and normal people will recoil in horror at the idea of killing a baby because it is inconvenient. We should all look forward to that day when we can say our work is done. We’ve eradicated abortion and changed the culture so that families are stronger and single mothers have a safety net that does not involve a caseworker and a handout. And then we should lock the doors and turn out the lives and go back to our homes, churches, and communities and sustain what we have accomplished by how we live our lives.

No, reversing Roe doesn’t mean the work of the pro-life movement is over; neither does it mean that we become campaigners and salesmen for the administrative state.

Despite high rates of incorrect results, medical professionals push prenatal testing that can lead to healthy babies being aborted. //

In a groundbreaking report published last month, The New York Times revealed that at detecting various rare and serious genetic issues, prenatal genetic screening tests provide incorrect results as often as 83 percent to 91 percent of the time.

Despite this alarming record, prenatal genetic testing is increasingly billed as a routine part of pregnancy care. The absurdly high number of false-positive screening results for various rare genetic disorders not only causes deep emotional harm to new parents, but even more tragically, in some cases motivates doctors and genetic counselors to incorrectly use these erroneous results to encourage women to abort their perfectly healthy children.

It is essential for women to understand that these genetic screening tests are exactly just that: a screen. They do not have the capability to definitively diagnose any genetic condition with 100 percent confidence or accuracy. As noted by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, an organization that researches and publishes data regarding abortion-related issues, “too little emphasis is placed on the fact that these tests are merely screening and not diagnostic tests. While the manufacturers recommend that a positive indication on the test should be confirmed with an invasive test such as an amniocentesis, some parents are choosing to abort their unborn children based entirely on these screenings.” //

Although it is difficult to find reliable published data regarding exactly how many prenatal tests are done, one company, Natera, reports that it performed 400,000 tests for a single genetic condition in 2020, according to The New York Times. One study found that four out of every one thousand tested pregnancies ends in abortion because of a “detected fetal anomaly.” Even if the tests were correct, this would be a tragedy.

Missouri lawmakers want to stop their residents from having abortions — even if they take place in another state.

The first-of-its-kind proposal would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident have an abortion — from the out-of-state physician who performs the procedure to whoever helps transport a person across state lines to a clinic, a major escalation in the national conservative push to restrict access to the procedure. //

I have no problem with laws forbidding taking minors across state lines for an abortion without parental consent (this, to me, means both parents). I favor states cracking down on the virtual consultations and mail order delivery of abortion pills. I’m 100% in favor of long prison terms for anyone participating in an abortion if the state has outlawed it. But, at some point, we need to realize that a lot of the country does not think abortion is wrong, and the way to move them is by education, not by the coercive power of the state. The last thing we need is ill-conceived laws that will have the effect of making heroes and martyrs of women who travel out of state for an abortion. The idea that any state government can compel you to follow its laws once you cross state lines should be abhorrent both in principle and where it is obviously going to lead us in the way of individual rights. //

Here is the problem as I see it. Can a state make it illegal for you to take part in an activity that is legal in another state? For instance, if New York passed a law making it a felony to enter a restaurant without having your proof of COVID vaccination, could you be prosecuted for dining out in Florida without such proof? Can you be arrested for possessing pot in a state where “medicinal” marijuana is legal if your home state still outlaws it? As you can see, if this idea is adopted to try to prevent women from traveling to an abortion-friendly state, the potential for mischief is meaningless. Already California is trying to use the enforcement mechanism in the Texas heartbeat law to attack gun sales.

Roe should be overruled. Almost no one believes it was rightly decided. Instead, the parties defending the case rely almost entirely on stare decisis, the judicial doctrine holding that judicial constancy is better than judicial correctness.

Yet Roe and later abortion cases are not just wrong, but egregiously so. Roe has thwarted the democratic process and made blood sport of judicial confirmations. It has proven hopelessly unworkable. Fifty years of legal and factual development have further demonstrated how wrong Roe is. Stare decisis should be no barrier to overruling Roe. //

Rather than deferring to the “bank and capital” of prior judicial reasoning, Burke identified five criteria needed for precedent “to have the qualities fit to render them of full authority in law”: [1] numerous; [2] concurrent and not contradictory and mutually destructive; [3] made in good and constitutional times; [4] not made to serve an occasion; and [5] agreeable to the general tenor of legal principles. //

Roe flunks at least three of Burke’s five-part test. First, American abortion law is contradictory. Roe relied on a trimester framework. Casey overruled this framework (along with several other of the Supreme Court’s abortion cases) and substituted the novel undue burden standard. Then, the Supreme Court came to opposite results in two nearly identical partial-birth abortion cases. Today, the lower courts cannot agree on what the undue burden standard even is.

Second, Roe was not decided in “good and constitutional times.” For 50 years, the Supreme Court has flitted from one constitutional rationale to another, unable to find the right to an abortion anywhere in the Constitution. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the decision “difficult to justify” and Justice Elena Kagan describes such former judicial endeavors as “policy-oriented” with judges “pretending to be congressmen.”

Third, Roe is not “agreeable to the general tenor of legal principles,” but departs from those principles at every turn. It is flatly inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s substantive due process precedents. It arrogates the judicial over the legislative. And it makes a mess of every area of law it touches.

The Supreme Court has limited its ability to discover extra-constitutional rights since the days of Roe. For a liberty interest to be protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, it must be “deeply rooted” in our nation’s “history and tradition.” No such right to abortion exists.

On February 1, the Associated Press (AP) published a widely disseminated article claiming that minority women “bear the brunt” of pro-life laws restricting abortion. Here’s a fact-check of this article’s many false and misleading claims.

https://www.chron.com/news/article/Minority-women-most-affected-if-abortion-is-16821676.php //

Minority women ask for support, and abortion peddlers — bolstered by their mainstream media allies — respond, No, you need abortion. One is hard-pressed to find a better example of modern racism than that. The “soft bigotry of low expectations” doesn’t feel very soft to the black child as he’s violently evacuated from his impoverished mother’s womb.

Despite what we might think of them as public figures, they were spouses, fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and they should be mourned. It does not diminish any other argument to bring gravity to the grief experienced and wish those experiencing that grief comfort.

But just as grief is complicated, so are these particular lives. For their sake and the sake of their causes, along with changing the world “for good,” they managed to unleash significant evil. Archbishop Tutu, Reid, and Sarah Weddington changed the trajectory of life and politics for this nation, and the world, so viewing their legacy through a more critical lens should be standard operating procedure.

Instead, what you see are the fulsome, glowing tributes on their accomplishments and how they changed the world for the better. What you rarely see is the post mortem on how those same accomplishments helped to further evil attitudes, evil intentions, divisiveness, and a culture of death.

Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid eroded a once august body of governance with his decision to nuke the filibuster regarding judicial appointments. The Left is now paying for this — in spades. Then-Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned them they would. When McConnell became Majority Leader after 2010, he used it to his advantage, most infamously blocking the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.

Reid also helped tank Senator Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential aspirations with unfounded lies about Romney not paying his taxes for 10 years. In a CNN interview, Reid was unapologetic about his comments which Republicans compared to McCarthyism:

“They can call it whatever they want. Romney didn’t win did he?” Reid said.

Archbishop Tutu championed Anti-Semitism in his cause to destroy the cultural racism of apartheid. Even after apartheid was overthrown in South Africa, Archbishop Tutu had nothing good to say about Israel or the Jewish people.

British writer Melanie Phillips observed:

There was, however, another side to Tutu — a shocking side. And just as one should respect the dead and pay tribute to their achievements, it is also incumbent upon us to tell the truth about that person if that truth is important enough, however distasteful this may be. And it undoubtedly is that important.

It’s not merely that Tutu demonised Israel with libellous falsehoods. Worse still, he explicitly and repeatedly demonised the Jewish people. His occasional claims that he identified with the Jews and his acknowledgement that they had been allies in the great fight against South African apartheid generally morphed into his grotesque and incomprehensible accusation that the Jews of Israel had done to the Palestinian Arabs what the apartheid regime had done to the black population of South Africa. //

Alpha Kitty @AlphaKitty
Sarah Weddington, American Lawyer of the Roe v. Wade Case, Dies at 76 | She argued the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in her first appearance before the high court at age 26 https://texastribune.org/2021/12/26/sarah-weddington-texas-roe-v-wade/
#womenshistory #womenrights #law
Image
11:58 AM · Dec 29, 2021 //

Thanks to Weddington and her work, the nation has experienced the almost 50-year stain that Roe and its subsequent culture of death have ingrained into the fabric of our country. From euthanasia to elder abuse and murder; youth murders, young people perpetrating mass shootings; to suicides and child trafficking: once you open the door to devaluing life at its most fecund point, that devaluation flows downstream. Pregnancy is a burden? Well, so is a special needs newborn, a troubled child, sick parents, and on it goes.

We are at the bottom of that slope and have been wallowing in the mud for quite some time. Everyone is filthy and smelly as a result of the decision 49 years ago to make life… expendable.

We will see how SCOTUS might rule on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and see if the whirlwind that Sarah Weddington unleashed with her ambition and her righteous cause will die along with her.

Abby Johnson @AbbyJohnson
Sarah Weddington has died. I have many, many feelings about this. I knew Sarah. For many years, I held her in high esteem. Spent time with her. Respected her. Later, I came to see her as someone who was a master manipulator. I can only pray that she sought The Lord before death.
1:12 PM · Dec 27, 2021

Mississippi Abortion Case – Roe v. Wade’s Flight 93 Oral Argument For Sotomayor, Breyer, Kagan

Sotomayor seemed desperate: “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” //

Three questions were presented in the Petition for a Writ of Certriorari, but the court granted review only on the first question:

1. Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.

2. Whether the validity of a pre-viability law that protects women’s health, the dignity of unborn children, and the integrity of the medical profession and society should be analyzed under Casey’s “undue burden” standard or Hellerstedt’s balancing of benefits and burdens.

3. Whether abortion providers have third-party standing to invalidate a law that protects women’s health from the dangers of late-term abortions.

That question, particularly to the exclusion of the others, seemed to be a signal that Roe v. Wade, which rested on viability, was on the table: //

Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?

The problem, of course, is that Roe v. Wade always was an exercise of political compromise, a compromise that never had clear popular support.

And the “stench” of politics has been injected into the system by those who support Roe v. Wade, starting with the disgusting treatment of Republican nominees from Robert Bork to Brett Kavanaugh. Every time a Republican makes a Supreme Court nomination, Democrats demand to know the nominee’s position on Roe v. Wade, it’s the central issue during hearings, media coverage, and protests.