Tag Archives: abortionrights

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Daily Broadside | One Year On From Reversing Roe v. Wade

A new week and the last of June 2023. Thank God “Pride Month” is nearly over.

You know another thing to thank God for? The overturning of Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

One thing to note is that the the SCOTUS ruling did not outlaw abortion. It simply returned the question to the jurisdiction of the individual states. It did, however, undo a grievous judgment of a prior Court that essentially made up a detailed law, far beyond its stated legal power to do so.

Now the decision is back in the hands of state legislatures, meaning that there are 50 fronts for pro- and anti-life forces to fight.

Over the last 12 months, 13 states have enacted near-total bans on abortion, while at least a dozen more have approved new laws curtailing access. In one state, Wisconsin, abortion services are suspended due to uncertainty about the status of an abortion ban from 1849 that remained on the books after the Roe decision. Wisconsin’s top officials are challenging the pre-Roe ban in court, arguing it should be unenforceable.

But we should be gratified with the huge “win” and the downstream impact that it has had.

Another great after-effect of the demise of Roe is that donations to abortion access groups have fallen off.

The “ rage giving ” did not last. Abortion access groups who received a windfall of donations following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade one year ago say those emergency grants have ended and individual and foundation giving has dropped off.

After the Dobbs decision, some major funders of abortion access also have ended or shifted funding from organizations working in states where abortion is now banned, said Naa Amissah-Hammond, senior director of grantmaking with Groundswell Fund, which funds grassroots groups organizing for reproductive justice.

Women’s health and foster care nonprofits, who expected increased demand in areas where access to abortion has been eliminated or restricted, say they also haven’t seen increased support.

What this tells me is that abortion is no longer a front-and-center issue for the culture at large, which is a detriment to Democrats, who fund-raise off of, and get voters to the polls from, the spectre of not having “safe and affordable” abortion services available. If abortion isn’t screaming for attention then there is less for the enemies of life to gin up fear over.

John Zmirak at The Stream wrote a good piece the other day and made these points:

The Unbridgeable Chasm
The point I was making, and which we should all insist on, is that the Life issue finally isn’t negotiable. It’s the Great Divide, the Grand Canyon, as slavery once was. Across it, no lasting rope bridge is possible. Either you think human life is fundamentally good and hence sacred, or you don’t. Either you believe that sexual convenience is a basic human right like life and liberty, or you don’t.

I’ve written here before about how quickly pro-aborts dropped the pretense that “abortion rights” are somehow grounded in the unwritten implications of this or that part of the U.S. Constitution. Justice Samuel Alito’s brilliant, historic majority opinion demolished the rickety, Rube Goldberg constructs of every pro-abortion precedent.

The Pretense Dropped Like a Towel at a Bathhouse
Now leftists have stopped citing “privacy” and “liberty,” which is handy — since they’ve made it clear that they actually believe in neither. If they did, they wouldn’t support secret FISA warrants aimed at Trump supporters and mandates for experimental vaccines. The same people who claimed for decades that “privacy” protected abortions up through nine months were happy to have the hostess at TGI Fridays demand women show their vaccine passports.

Now things are easier for them, in a sense. They can be honest and admit that they don’t care about “choice.” (You can’t choose your vaccine status, your kids’ public school, or what you say on the Internet.) They just care about abortion.

They’re willing to rally with Satanists who claim that it’s their “sacrament.” They don’t want abortions “safe, legal, and rare.” They never did. (When Bill Clinton said that, he was just as sincere as when he promised Hillary that he would “forsake all others.”) They want them easy, plentiful, and profitable — and they want to gaslight women who’ve had them into “shouting” them proudly in public.

To Face the Party of Death, We Need a Party of Life
We should help the left to make this point, that it’s unambiguously the Party of Death. It’s also the party of crime in the streets, child castration, chaotic open borders, racist “diversity” mandates, gun grabs, massive debt, election fraud, censorship, mass indoctrination, torn down statues, Antifa, mob rule, and defunding the police.

I particularly like his cut that the Democrats are “the Party of Death.” It’s true and I long ago came to the conclusion that I’d rather be an American than a Democrat. Their party is nothing but anti-Americanism draped in the red, white and blue.

Abortion may no longer be considered a constitutional right, but that fight, and many others, are far from over.

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Daily Broadside | The Weaponization of the Federal Government Continues Apace

Daily Verse | Proverbs 14:34
Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.

Thursday’s Reading: Proverbs 18-21

Thursday and, if you’ve been paying attention (and even if you weren’t), the Supreme Court sent Roe v. Wade to the dustbin of history last month with a 6-3 majority (although Roberts only concurred with the case in question, Dobbs, not with overturning Roe). Of course, there was the much anticipated reaction from the Left, which had been hyperventilating with murderous threats since the draft opinion was leaked in May, with one near-assassination attempt on Justice Kavanaugh. As the Left likes to spout about every issue it supports, “people are gonna die!” And they almost delivered.

Roe was overturned on solid constitutional grounds because it was originally established on faulty reasoning and unconstitutional grounds. In other words, Roe was judicial malpractice, with the court overstepping its authority and usurping the role of the State legislatures. Even the notorious RGB agreed that Roe was bad law. Remember, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” In other words, the federal government has only the powers delegated to it in the U.S. Constitution. If a power isn’t listed, that “power” belongs to the states or to the people.

The legality of abortion — killing an unwanted child all the way up to the moment of birth in some cases — was rightly returned to the States for adjudication.

A number of States have banned (or will shortly ban) abortion, while many others have codified abortion. Some, like New York and Vermont, want to make abortion access a constitutional right so that it can’t be rescinded with new legislatures. While I am adamantly opposed to abortion, this is how it should be: each State working out through their legislatures how they will handle baby-killing.

So, with all being right in the world, why does this press release give me the chills?

The Justice Department announced today the establishment of the Reproductive Rights Task Force. The Task Force formalizes an existing working group and efforts by the Department over the last several months to identify ways to protect access to reproductive health care in anticipation of the possibility of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. 

Oh.

Let me get this straight. SCOTUS corrects an egregious (not to say illegal) wrong and the United States Department of Justice — justice which is supposed to act only according to the law without respect to education, rank, wealth, sex, skin color or opinion — is not only choosing sides, but aligning itself against SCOTUS?

“As Attorney General Garland has said, the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision is a devastating blow to reproductive freedom in the United States,” said Associate Attorney General Gupta. “The Court abandoned 50 years of precedent and took away the constitutional right to abortion, preventing women all over the country from being able to make critical decisions about our bodies, our health, and our futures. The Justice Department is committed to protecting access to reproductive services.”

As is usual with Leftists, they constantly lie, and especially so in our ruling class. SCOTUS did not “take away a constitutional right to abortion” because there never was a constitutional right to abortion to begin with. That so-called “right” was made up by unelected men in black who “concocted an elaborate set of rules, with different restrictions for each trimester of pregnancy, but [they] did not explain how this veritable code could be teased out of anything in the Constitution, the history of abortion laws, prior precedent, or any other cited source.”

Also note the euphemism, “reproductive services.” If you’re fighting for abortion, you’re not fighting for “reproduction.” You’re fighting to keep from reproducing which, let’s face it, is pretty simple: keep your zippers zipped.

But that won’t stop the DOJ and former SCOTUS nominee Merrick Garland from bringing the weight of the federal government to bear on the States and, in effect, on We the People.

Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta will chair the Task Force, which will consist of representatives from the Department’s Civil Division, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Attorney community, Office of the Solicitor General, Office for Access to Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, Office of Legal Policy, Office of Legislative Affairs, Office of the Associate Attorney General, Office of the Deputy Attorney General and Office of the Attorney General and will be supported by dedicated staff.

Hey, Fat, what’s with all the “offices”?

Those many “offices” who are banding together to intimidate those who oppose abortion are being paid for by your taxes. This is a perfect example of the federal leviathan that, once created, keeps growing and consuming more resources, more office space, more overhead and, most of all, more tax dollars. Like Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors.

Guess who else the DOJ is “partnering” with.

The Justice Department is working with external stakeholders such as reproductive services providers, advocates and state attorneys general. The Task Force will continue this important effort. It will also work with the Office of Counsel to the President to convene a meeting of private pro bono attorneys, bar associations and public interest organizations in order to encourage lawyers to represent and assist patients, providers and third parties lawfully seeking reproductive health services throughout the country.

Can you imagine the DOJ, or any agency of the United States government for that matter, advocating on behalf of crisis pregnancy centers if the situation had somehow been reversed and it was pro-life advocates who had lost a “right”?

Yeh, me neither.

The DOJ is pulling together a juggernaut of baby-killer advocates to fight for an imaginary “right” to murder your offspring instead of upholding the law of the land which is now being determined by the States. In Garland’s own statement, he says that, “The Justice Department will use every tool at our disposal to protect reproductive freedom.”

It sounds like he’s serious.

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Daily Broadside | Back in the Saddle Edition

Daily Verse | Proverbs 8:13
To fear the Lord is to hate evil.

Tuesday’s Reading: Proverbs 10-13

Happy Tuesday and welcome back, me!

My family and I had a good two-week vacation to the east coast where we spent time in the sun and surf off of South Carolina. The more time we spend there the more we think we’d like to live there someday.

Someday. But not today.

My thanks to Bruce Gust for his engaging and upbeat writing on A Biblical Approach to Politics. I’m blessed to have him as a long-time friend and brother in Christ who comes at life in much the same way I do. I’m hoping you found his thinking and insight as helpful to you as I did.

So, did anything happen while I was out?

LOL JK.

Bruce mentioned one of the main developments in the opening to his blog post yesterday that happened right after I left: the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and sending the matter of abortion back to the states.

I won’t rehash the news here except to note that it’s particularly mesmerizing to watch the progressive leviathan writhe in agony when political or cultural decisions don’t go their way, thrashing in the extremes and then, once the cameras are off, standing up and going back to what they do best: criticizing and destroying anything good and noble out of their hatred for anything we’d consider normal.

Are women really going to “die” if a State prohibits abortion? Nope. Pregnancy is not a disease and abortion is never necessary to save the life of a mother. Are States that prohibit abortion “forcing” women to carry their pregnancy to term? Nope. The body does that. Pregnancy is a naturally-occurring process that, based on the current world population, has happened at least 8 billion times. Killing a baby in utero is unnatural and used to be considered an appalling crime against humanity.

Let’s just call abortion what it is: after-the-fact contraception.

Let’s also call Roe v. Wade what it was: a wrongly decided, unconstitutional court case wielding nothing but “raw judicial power” that invented a right — and the law to support it — out of whole cloth. Or, as Samuel Alito put it, writing for the majority:

Not only was there no support for such a constitutional right until shortly before Roe, but abortion had long been a crime in every single State. At common law, abortion was criminal in at least some stages of pregnancy and was regarded as unlawful and could have very serious consequences at all stages. American law followed the common law until a wave of statutory restrictions in the 1800s expanded criminal liability for abortions. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, three-quarters of the States had made abortion a crime at any stage of pregnancy, and the remaining States would soon follow …

Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives …

Roe found that the Constitution implicitly conferred a right to obtain an abortion, but it failed to ground its decision in text, history, or precedent. It relied on an erroneous historical narrative; it devoted great attention to and presumably relied on matters that have no bearing on the meaning of the Constitution; it disregarded the fundamental difference between the precedents on which it relied and the question before the Court; it concocted an elaborate set of rules, with different restrictions for each trimester of pregnancy, but it did not explain how this veritable code could be teased out of anything in the Constitution, the history of abortion laws, prior precedent, or any other cited source; and its most important rule (that States cannot protect fetal life prior to ‘viability’) was never raised by any Opinion of the Court party and has never been plausibly explained.

A lot of people kept up the fight against abortion for these last 50 years. I remember my youth pastor going to protest at abortion clinics back in the 80s. Those who fought the monstrosity called “abortion” for decades deserve the greatest share of the credit for Roe’s demise.

But there’s another person who deserves great credit, and that is president-in-exile Trump. No matter what you think of him — and opinions vary widely on both sides of the aisle — he said he’d put originalists on the court, and he did. Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were all appointed by Trump, and all three were key to overturning Roe v. Wade.

Who would have thought it? A big-city billionaire who turned out to be the most pro-life president in history. And his legacy, should he come to the end of his life having served only one term, will live on in the lives of millions who are born as a result of this historic decision made possible by his appointments.