Pro-life win – what next?

CNAV congratulates all pro-life activists in America. They have won a great victory, in that the Supreme Court has corrected a forty-nine-year-old error. Specifically, the Court overruled the expansive case of Roe v. Wade and the follow-up case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. But they have not won the war. As CNAV said yesterday, they just took a strategic mountain. Having taken that mountain, they can move on to other objectives. But those will be even harder, and they will win only with another Great Awakening.

Reaction to the Roe overrule

First, anyone wishing to review the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization may do so here:

Reaction to that case varies from the neutral to the overwrought. One almost wouldn’t expect it to be so overwrought. After all, whoever leaked Justice Sam Alito’s first draft on May 2 surely gave both sides plenty of warning. Nevertheless, half the country seems to have taken leave of its collective senses.

Sources include CNN, NPR, and Vanity Fair. While CNN and NPR at least try to be neutral, Vanity Fair does not. Eric Lutz ran with this bitter subtitle:

The court’s conservative majority took a sledgehammer to reproductive rights in America, formally voting down federal abortion protections.

Nina Totenberg and Sarah McCammon at NPR showed far more grace than that. In fact they admit that law professors have long criticized Roe precisely as Sam Alito did in his majority opinion.

CNN, to their credit, showed near-total neutrality. But they also alleged that their polling shows the public did not want to see the result in Dobbs. Because they shared neither methods nor raw data, one cannot fairly judge whether that’s true, or wishful thinking. But if those results are as CNN says, pro-life advocates need to know about them. After all, they show the hearts-and-minds battle they must now fight, a battle they will find hard to win.

The off-the-wall reaction

Beyond that, this series of embeds show the most graceless, and sometimes tone-deaf, reactions from “pro-choice” advocates. These include video of speakers saying things that will only embarrass them later. For one can be sure that pro-life advocates will use some of these statements in their hearts-and-minds campaign.

The site Pro-life Update gathered most of the above tweets. We also have:

What can one say? One can understand the ACLU lamenting that “half the States” will soon ban ending a pregnancy. (And they correctly observe that, by overruling Roe, the majority in Dobbs removed the federal Constitutional protection from such procedures.) One can question a sitting Senator’s conclusion that the American people want a different result. (He may say it, but that doesn’t make it correct.) But it ill befits a Member of Congress to call openly for riots in the streets. (And when Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., calls for defying the Court, perhaps even she can’t say exactly how.)

And it certainly ill befits even a pro-choice activist to call for ending pregnancies because they expect the child to be handicapped, have Down’s syndrome, or be autistic. (In point of fact, autism is still an acceptable ground for social discrimination, and maybe the only one.) In reply to that last, Liz Wheeler said it best:

Those precious people have the same value as you & me (sic).

More disturbing scenes

Even more disturbing are the following scenes, which we hear about from BizPac Review. Let the footage speak for itself:

The common denominator in all these scenes is: the pro-choice side started something and let it get out of hand. But the pro-life side needs to ask, not only “where were those in authority,” but “how much of what we see represents typical attitudes in various places?” Ironically, at least half those scenes took place in States where the law will not see any changes of substance. The rest will only infuriate pro-life legislators the more. Is that what they want? You decide.

Was Biden once more pro-life, or at least less pro-choice?

President Biden, for his part, put his foot into it. Yesterday he tweeted this:

Make no mistake: Today’s overruling of Roe v. Wade is the culmination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law. It’s a realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court.

He also, according to Just the News, said the Dobbs decision makes the “United States an outlier among developed nations.” Wrong, Mr. President. The United States has been an outlier since Roefor its permissive policies. The laws of most Western countries are far more pro-life than American law today, at least pre-Dobbs.

More embarrasing than this, is this video of Biden’s apparent thoughts sixteen years ago.

Ramesh Ponnuru also picked up on how many Democrats originally voted for the Human Life Amendment during the Reagan years. In fact that resolution cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee, 10-7. Joe Biden was one Senator who voted in favor, as The New York Times archives show.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Speaker of the House, left no doubt where she stands. She left a four-paragraph statement making several lurid predictions of what her opposition will do next. Then she said,

The rights of women and all Americans are on the ballot this November.

That might be truer than she knows – because half the little targets for whose lives they fight, are female. Pro-life people know this and are not afraid to say it.

Target: Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Speaking of targets, the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg has become a target of the left. President Obama apparently asked her to retire so that he could appoint someone younger to carry her torch. And she refused. “I’ve got at least five more years,” she said as recently as 2018. Only she didn’t. She died in 2020, and Amy Coney Barrett replaced her.

Scott Feinberg has perhaps the only reaction on the pro-choice side worth mentioning.

RBG was a hero for many reasons. But the terrible irony is that her decision to stay too long at the party helped lead to the destruction of one of the things she cared about the most. Sadly, this will be a big part of her legacy.

Did Ginsburg identify what galvanized the pro-life movement?

Mr. Feinberg didn’t mention one other thing: Ruth Bader Ginsburg was afraid that Roe would fall exactly as it did. In 1992, while lecturing at New York University, she warned that Roe decided too much, too fast. She didn’t actually address any of Sam Alito’s criticisms of it. But she did observe – correctly – that the Supreme Court decides most of its cases very narrowly. The Court should have invalidated the specific Texas statute making ending a pregnancy a felony except to save the mother’s life. Ginsburg preferred the incremental approach the Left once favored – until they lost all patience. The Roe case simply galvanized the opposition.

Perhaps Ginsburg understood something today’s detractors of her did not, and of which William O. Douglas lost sight. Namely that if you throw a live frog into a boiling pot, he’ll jump out. You have to heat the water slowly and gradually.

Similarly she decried the kind of language she saw already coming from a few Court dissents – and not only the Supreme Court but the Courts of Appeals also. Specifically, she saw dissenters resort to name-calling, insults, and otherwise not exactly judicial or Justicial language. Surely the dissent by Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan in Dobbs would have mortified her with embarrassment.

Does that necessarily mean she really was as gracious as she at least pretended? Not necessarily. But it could mean that she was smart. She knew that one caught more flies with honey than with vinegar.

The pro-life side seems to understand

The pro-life side has shown that they understood what they have won, and what they have not won. President Donald Trump, of course, took credit for yesterday’s result – and President Biden showed no inclination to dispute him.

The Daily Signal carried this summary of the opinion, the Roberts partial concurrence, and the dissent. For their part, The Daily Wire remarked that many States will go all pro-life soon, if they haven’t already. To be specific, thirteen States already have “trigger bans” in place. These await only the word of Attorneys General, and maybe Governors, that these bans would face no credible court challenge. They are: Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. Of these, the Attorneys General of Missouri and Texas have already issued their “triggering” opinions.

Five more States (Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, and South Carolina) have laws on the books that courts have already struck down. Their Attorneys General will now work to get them un-struck.

Next we see States ready to act, even if it means calling legislatures into special session to pass pro-life laws. Indiana is one. West Virginia left its pre-Roe pro-life law on its books. They have now passed a pro-life Amendment to their own Constitution.

Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia definitely wants the General Assembly to take up pro-life legislation next January. The Washington Post suggests he’ll ask for a law like Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, which sets a fifteen-week limit.

The other side digs in

This interactive page tells you the status of the law in every State. Select a State from the drop-down list to learn what the law allows – and whether that will change.

One thing that hasn’t changed, seem to be government attitudes in “blue” States. New York’s Acting Governor signed new legislation declaring New York a “safe harbor” for “choice.” What exactly that new law will do is unclear. But the Acting Governor made her sentiments abundantly clear:

The women of New York will never be subjected to government-mandated pregnancies because that’s what will ensue if Roe v. Wade is overturned by the Supreme Court.

Even Justice Alito, in his majority opinion, said that is not true. Justice Brent Kavanaugh said explicitly that the Dobbs decision does not make certain procedures illegal throughout the land. The reason: there never has been a federal law about whether any kind of operation is legal or illegal.

Pro-life activists and sympathizers, from Lila Rose to Bradlee Dean, are the first to point out that the Dobbs decision does not make new law. It lets States make this new law, if they will.

And that seems to be the problem. How quickly will certain people act, now that the Supreme Court seemingly has let them? Pastor Matt Trewhalla wonders just that.

Shortly after the leak, Pastor Trewhalla questioned why anyone would obey Roe to begin with. Now that it’s gone, he points out, we’ll see who among ostensible pro-life politicians are actually sincere.

The biggest pro-life problem: will the conservative majority split?

Pro-life advocates usually (but not always) advocate for reversals of a few other Supreme Court precedents. The U.S. Solicitor General mentioned some of them: Griswold v. Connecticut, Loving v. Virginia, Lawrence v. Texas, and Obergefell v. Hodges.

The Court decided at least three of those using “substantive due process.” That doctrine says some liberties the government must allow no matter what process anyone employs to take them away. And Clarence Thomas wants to re-examine all of them, except perhaps the Loving case.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh does not agree! In his full concurrence, he assured people that the Dobbs decision does not touch those cases.

So Clarence Thomas has, at best, a hard sell. His colleague Sam Alito barely held a majority to overrule Roe. And he and Kavanaugh both had to assure, in writing, that their decision throws the debate back to the States. So if someone were to challenge one of those three precedents today, that challenge might not succeed. Tellingly, no other Justice joinedClarence Thomas in his concurrence.

The pro-choice side totally loses sight of that, in tweets and other statements that do not bear mention here. The pro-life side should not – and very likely does not. Men like Matt Trewhalla, Bradlee Dean, Gary De Mar, and Andrew Torba (head of Gab.com) likely want to create a Constitutional crisis.

And ironically, the pro-choice side has opened the door. Recall the overwrought comments by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)

Kavanaugh throws the pro-life side a hint

Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence gives the clearest hint yet of the problem the pro-life side faces. Which is: they lack critical support for defining a right to life in the Constitution. Kavanaugh clearly has never even thought about whether natural law gives a preborn child a right to life – or not. The Constitution, true enough, is silent on the matter. (It doesn’t even define the word person!) But when the Constitution is silent, the people, and their jurists, need to resort to a Higher Source. Some call that Source “natural law,” but the Source really has another Name: God.

America was once a Christian nation. John Adams, in his speech to a Massachusetts militia unit, said so. So in his day, men knew their Bibles well enough to quote from them – and cite them in legal or Constitutional deliberations. And when one does this, one finds instant support for a right to life in the Bible:

For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Your eyes have seen my unformed substance. And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.Psalm 139:13-16 (NAS)

The problem of unbelief

The problem is: these aren’t the days of John Adams. These are the days of nearly a century and a half of government funding of schools that teach unbelief. For which, l blame James G. Blaine – and those who took his advice.

Clarence Thomas did draw five of his colleagues to join him in repudiating the Blaine Regime. (Carson v. Makin.) But fully repairing the damage of those 147 years might take another generation, or two.

So the pro-life side must tackle the basic problem of a populace that has lost sight of its Creator. In all his masterful analysis of the relevant law, Justice Sam Alito never once looked to the Source. Neither did Brett Kavanaugh. One cannot even be sure of Clarence Thomas, though we do know that he’s a Catholic, like several of his colleagues.

These men and women are products of their environment. The people must change that environment. That change will not come easily, but the pro-life side does have this key advantage. Members of the pro-life side believe in family and nurture. People on the other side couldn’t care less if the whole species dies out. If they keep thinking and practicing that way, the species won’t dies out, but they will. Even before that, successive pro-life generations will outvote, outlast, and replace them.