Two years ago, the Supreme Court vindicated the right to life by reversing a 1973 ruling, which abruptly asserted the existence of a constitutional right to abortion that no one had ever previously heard of. Suddenly, a new day dawned for the defenders of unborn human life in America.
So how do things stand after two years?.
If anyone had imagined the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling was its final word on abortion, he or she surely knows better now. While reversing Roe v. Wade’s gratuitous bestowal of constitutionally protected status on abortion, the decision opened a whole new chapter in the abortion wars.
Last month the court underlined that by two actions disappointing to pro-lifers as its term drew to a close.
First, in an unsigned order the court said it acted prematurely in agreeing to hear a challenge to a restrictive Idaho law on abortion, returned the case to the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals for argument, and meanwhile left standing a lower federal judge’s ruling against the law. Pro-lifers had hoped the Supreme Court would uphold it.
In the second case, the high court ruled unanimously that pro-life medical groups and physicians who had brought suit to make distribution of the abortifacient drug Mifepristone more difficult lacked legal standing inasmuch as they themselves had not suffered any tangible injury.
Pro-lifers still have the option of pursuing the matter if they can find a suitable plaintiff—such as (and purely for illustrative purposes) a pharmacist who lost his or her job for refusing to fill prescriptions for Mifepristone. The drug was used in 63% of all known abortions in the United States last year.
So much—for now—for the Supreme Court. The justices are currently on their summer break and will resume work next October 7. Meanwhile pro-life groups need to do some strategic rethinking in light of new numbers concerning laws and public opinion on abortion.
Overall, the situation looks like this.
Fourteen states have total bans on abortion. Twenty-seven states permit abortions before some designated point in pregnancy—18 weeks or earlier in 20 states, some point after 18 weeks in seven states. And nine states plus the District of Columbia place no time restrictions on the performance of abortion by whatever means.
Public opinion on abortion presents a disturbing picture. According to the Pew Research Center, a generally reliable source of such data, 73% of white Evangelical Protestants hold that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases while 86% of the religiously unaffiliated—a group growing in numbers in recent years—say it should be legal in all or most cases.
Among other groups, percentages favoring legalized abortion are: Black Protestants—71%, White nonevangelical Protestants—64%, Catholics—59%. Pew doesn’t break down the Catholic number, but other polls have found self-identified Catholics who seldom or never attend Mass twice as numerous as Catholics who attend weekly or more often. It’s a safe bet t those non-attenders generally support legalized abortion while the attenders generally oppose it.
Strategy? The pro-abortion strategy is clear. Fight laws restricting abortion in legislatures and courts, including the Supreme Court. Get the issue on the ballot in November wherever possible. Count on support from generally pro-abortion media.
Does the pro-life movement have a comprehensive plan for addressing this difficult situation? It should. They got what they wanted—the overturning of Roe v. Wade. But that has opened a new era in defending the unborn. And don’t expect the Supreme Court to do it all.
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1. What good are our U.S. Constitution and our U.S. Supreme Court if they smile upon the mass murder of innocent unborn children in the USA (so long as the state government of any or all states approve of abortion)?
2. The two major political parties are both pro-choice now.
3. The “conservative” party’s party line now is that the locus of the abortion decision making should be the state government, not the individual pregnant woman, but that whatever the state government decides is acceptable, even if it allows some, many, or most abortions to be legal. This is moral madness from the traditional Catholic point of view.
Very well said! The United States Supreme Court must revisit Dobbs and acknowledge that God’s littlest children have the same 5th and 14th Amendment right to life that all persons have.
Interestingly, there have only been two times in the entire history of the United States Supreme Court when the Court has denied constitutional personhood to any classes of human beings—the Dred Scott decision in 1856 and the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.
The Dobbs Court left the fundamental issue of the right-to-life of God’s littlest children to the tender mercies of the fifty state legislatures, and to future decades of divisive chaos among the states and among the citizenry of the nation.
There is an urgent need for a serious reassessment by the United States Supreme Court of its deliberate choice in Dobbs to avoid deciding whether prenatal life is entitled to the constitutional right to life.
The first sentence in this article contains a significant factual error. The Dobbs decision did not vindicate a right to life, for the Court explicitly said in its majority opinion that the issue was not “rights” at all but, rather, WHO was regulating abortion. They said that abortion could be fully legal as long as elected legislatures are making it legal, and not courts. In taking “rights” out of the issue entirely, the Court actually made it harder for pro-lifers in the future to establish a legal right to life under the Constitution. The Dobbs decision was a lot less pro-life than many realize, and people have to see that if they’re going to respond effectively to the shift in public opinion in favor of legalized abortion that has picked up speed in the last two years.
Dobbs also held, “no right to abortion.”
Among other things, this can mean that the US Supreme Court will be developing several legal tests to say when a State’s law permitting abortion will be upheld and when it will not be upheld.
Presumably the Court will also be elucidating over time what practical ideas can justify a State law in this area.
We can only assume that the Court will uphold a State’s decision to completely outlaw abortion. This however will mean that the Court would be managing separated justicial lines or lines of legal philosophy, that are not reconcilable together or to the Union. It is possible that the Court would strike down a State’s total ban on or criminalizing of abortion, in order to conceptually “keep the Union intact”.
These types of anaylses consequent on Dobbs indicate a decision making what is called in the profession and in legal histories, bad law. Bad law is an umbrella term denoting one or more of a variety of basic crucial things being undermined, like certainty, rationality, cogency and the like; as well as core areas of natural justice, procedure, justiciability, just outcomes and the like.
The assertion by any court that it, a court, can permit abortion, a crime, already is bad law from the start. The absolute most basic principle of court jurisdiction, in any matter, anywhere, any time, is, that a court can not condone or ignore crime. Thus, managing crime through the court will always be bad law as well as corrupt.
There was never a Federal ‘right’ to abortion. Dobbs was very thorough in showing no precedent existed going back to the founding.
In terms of D&D, it was a Lawful Good decision, not a Chaotic Good decision. As it should be. It is not the Catholic position that, “The ends justify the means.” We must have the right ends, yes, but we must pursue them by the right means. Sadly, neither political party now has the right ends — if indeed either ever did.
Abortion is a human life issue not strictly religious. I mean no disrespect to Catholic pro-life activists. A non-believer can be equally as pro-life as a good Catholic and even bear prison sentence for it as with any human cause.
Using your terminology, I say Dobbs was not a “lawful good” decision. It was a wrong decision that allows the good to be overrun, which is chaos. It left unaddressed many necessary things in law, society and human understanding; but in doing that the bench also failed in its own integral duties. The bench continues the sham of knowing what the jurisprudence is and announcing its own constructs. Dobbs shifts from one chaos under Roe to another under Dobbs in spite of saying “no right to abortion”. It should have upheld the history always outlawing abortion.
As for your deferring to the politicians and politics, there are some things that are not up for management by those who are elected. It can not be given to them by judges to manage it nor by the electorate or anybody else; and they can not refer it to judges to manage it either, nor to the electorate. Don’t be silly.
Among other things, abortion permissiveness can not subsist alongside medical law, it will always be a foil to the integrity of true medical practice. More chaos. This directly spills over into the society at the level of families and community groups like foster care and immigration.
As Shaw poignantly notes, FOURTEEN STATES HAVE TOTAL BANS. It is not true that the society can not bear true pro-life law nor true that there must be an exclusive singular politics of accommodations for sake of the Union. Dobbs bows to bargaining over human life and it is NOT good it is shameful.
In other words, the Union is already being destroyed by abortion; and it DOES NOT subsist through compromises, accommodations and contemporaneous makeshifts, etc.
We read: “…the high court ruled unanimously that pro-life medical groups and physicians who had brought suit to make distribution of the abortifacient drug Mifepristone more difficult lacked legal standing inasmuch as they themselves had not suffered any tangible injury.”
The perfect Catch-22!
How to recognize the “legal standing” of the unborn and “tangibly injured” child? For whom, the exterminated and extracted results are 100% in every case! In our technological age of miniaturization (e.g., tiny two-gram computer chips replacing large chunks of IBM’s early and 16,000-pound computers), isn’t Mifepristone a lot like the 475 acres of Auschwitz miniaturized onto the shelf of a medicine cabinet?
On the full range of modernity’s commercialized and cheaply politicized issues, G.K. Chesterton broadly recognized the “democracy of the dead.”
Should the anti-abortion, pro-Life position be based upon a principle of moderate realism supporting that right to life? The arguments from whom are our rights derived from God or legislators are the cornerstones of the cultural divide.
“Moderate realism?” On the ideology that prior human rights are only a later invention or concession from the state, how about this from Bernanos:
“The modern world will shortly no longer possess sufficient spiritual reserves to commit genuine evil. Already . . . we can witness a lethal slackening of men’s conscience that is attacking not only their moral life, but also their very heart and mind, altering and decomposing even their imagination . . . The menacing crisis is one of INFANTILISM.”
(Interview with Samedi-Soir, Nov. 8, 1947, cited in Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Bernanos: An Ecclesial Existence” [San Francisco: Ignatius, 1996], 457, caps added).
No state has any authority whatsoever to legalize the murder of innocent humanity. We thought that was settled at the Nuremberg Trials, the prosecutors of which treated “legal” abortion as a crime against humanity.
“We thought that was settled at the Nuremberg Trials….” You thought that was some sort of rigorous deduction? Or maybe you thought it was a ruling by an authority greater than that of any nation? Sorry, it was neither. It was sinful men judging sinful men. Remember, Stalin got to appoint judges to that tribunal. On the whole it was good — as good as could be done — but it was not the infallible word of God. Not that the infallible word of God is not itself routinely ignored or deliberately misinterpreted.
But many people, including many doctors, in the U.S., do not recognize the humanity of an embryo or a fetus. And these are the doctors that politicians are most likely to listen to.
Unless they are universally beloved in their cities, a doctor who maintains, in public, the humanity of an embryo or fetus, may find themselves dismissed from their health care system (or at least, ostracized by fellow physicians), no longer admitted into local hospitals, and unable to find a place to practice medicine.
And “science”, which should support the humanity of an embryo or fetus, does not.
Scientists working mainly in universities depend on getting “tenure” from the university to keep their jobs and research projects, so they generally have to keep quiet about the humanity of the human embryo/fetus, and those who DO maintain pro-life views in public may be denied tenure, funding, or their job, or at the least, be harassed regularly by liberal student organizations and even by fellow professors.
That’s tough. It’s easy to talk about “sacrifice”, but in the U.S., people who are used to having their material needs met through their own work are generally not very good at being “unemployed,” especially if they have families to support.
Are Christians prepared to help these scientists by paying their bills, or hiring them to teach in Catholic/Christian schools and not only paying them what they were paid in the university, but also funding their research and providing the facility/lab/equipment for their research?
I know that there are large Catholic colleges and universities, but it seems that many of these places are CINO.
I think at this point in U.S. history, the best we can do is be pro-life in our views and donate our time, talent, and resources to local pregnancy care centers (at least until they are closed by the government for various false reasons; e.g., they are dangerous to women’s health).
I think we need to hunker down in our churches and pray much and donate more of our offerings to pro-life centers than to “church beautification, etc.
I think we need to teach our children about the sanctity of life and not send them to any public schools, camps, sports teams, etc. that blatantly ignore the actual science of embryology–of course, this will require more money from families who are struggling to pay bills, which may mean that many of us should strongly consider a “simpler lifestyle” that leaves us with enough money for these important pro-life actions.
Pro-life people are currently a minority in the U.S., and we have to face that and come up with solutions that will eventually make “life” a “right” in the U.S.A.
Let’s get real. The unfortunate fact is America along with the rest of the Western Countries have changed from a Christian culture to a neo pagan culture. Except for Catholics most other Christian sects have for all intents adopted the neo pagan mind set, which accepts abortion. Beyond that the fact is in Catholic Churches sermons against abortion are not given and many bishops have not made a point of denouncing abortion. Also how many Catholics or Clergy have stood within the prescribed distance of an abortion facility and prayed a rosary. If Catholics or others really want to stop abortion, an all out effort has to start to push back against the neo pagan culture. This require leadership that just does not exist.
https://www.priestsforlife.org/
59% of Catholics favor legalized abortion. (I’d imagine the percentage would be similar regarding same-sex marriage and even higher regarding contraception.) Frankly, I’m surprised that the percentage favoring legalized abortion isn’t higher. Back in 1958, then-Father Joseph Ratzinger (of blessed memory) wrote that many Catholics were merely baptized pagans. Apparently, the situation hasn’t changed.
Oh–one more thing. We need to recognize and swallow the fact that the Democratic Party, the party that our sainted parents and grandparents proudly supported, is no longer a viable option for Catholics to support, and GET OUT OF THIS PARTY! So you can’t stomach the idea of joining the G.O.P.? Well, go ahead and support one of the teeny tiny parties that doesn’t have a chance with hole in it of every winning any office. Get real!–the Republicans were the anti-slavery party and proved it by getting former slaves elected to federal positions shortly after the Civil War. Their attempts to help former African American slaves were thwarted by the Democratic Party and the Ku Klux Klan. Now the Republicans are, or at least, were, the best option for those of us who are pro-life. And they are NOT the Party of the Wealthy (eye roll). Take a look at list of Big Money people who are supporters of the Democratic Party–almost all the entertainment professionals, media professionals, current authors of best-sellers, science “celebrities,” the Silicon Valley billionaires, etc.–definitely NOT the Party of the “Little Man,” and especially not the Party of the “Littlest Men”–the embryos and fetuses!
Mrs. Whitlock: Agree 100%, my parents who have passed were upset with me when I pointed out the facts you mentioned. The Republican Party is not perfect by any means, but are only game in town to push back on abortion and other nonsense. Unfortunately first we need a return of Catholics to an across the board Pro Life position, starting with the Bishops.
What would the Church be like if every diocese could decide what is moral and what immoral? The whole “State’s rights “ issue makes no sense today. The same goes for the Electoral College. Our people are no longer grounded and committed to ancestral place. Most modern families are split between many states, and few stay in one place for their lifetimes. Now the majority change jobs every five years and are willing to move to further their careers. But these are secular matters and we should not be overly concerned about them. We should do our part to change them, but not be disappointed if we fail to make a difference.
That said, what we MUST fight for is toleration of conscience and freedom of speech. In a Democracy the majority rules, but doesn’t dictate. Provision must be made for dissenters to live freely as long as they do no harm to the majority. As Catholics we must fight for the right to be left alone and practice our faith without compromise. We must contribute more than our share to the furtherance of the common good but refuse to contribute to what is evil and immoral . We must be be willing to turn the other cheek and be nonresident.
As the moral fabric of society is unraveling around us we must become the leaven in the lump, the light in the darkness. It’s possible that we are closer to the end times than we think and we must prepare our lamps and be ready for the bridegroom.
I prefer smaller government and as much as possible governed locally by each state.
The Church may be universal but our federal government is not. Nor is it all powerful in spite of the attempts to make it so.
You agree then that “No state has any authority whatsoever to legalize the murder of innocent humanity.” and that this was affirmed at the Nuremberg Trials, right?
The Ur-Nammu Law Code, the oldest extant legal code (2100 to 2050 BC), prohibits murder. People who did not worship the God of the Bible realized murder was wrong. The difference between civilization and savagery is that under the former murder is considered immoral and is punished by the state.
The Nazis had descended into savagery hidden behind a facade of civilization. It only requires being civilized to realize that, not belief in the God of the Bible.
My remark was in reply to user Outis.
I am pro-life, ALL life. “14 states have ceased NEARLY All abortion services”. Why not all 50 states? The 14 states seem to allow for exceptions. That is exactly why we Catholics don’t have a viable plan for ALL states.
God save ALL life.
Morgan, do you believe that states currently promoting feticide up to the moment of birth are going to reverse course and embrace prolife laws with no exceptions for things like incest or sexual assault?
My own state doesn’t allow for those exceptions and I’m proud of that but many
people are a long way from recognizing the intrinsic value of every child regardless of the circumstances of their conception. Sadly, even some people in these comments.
Given the Dobbs Decision, which sent the issue of abortion back to the states, I doubt that you will see a national abortion ban. Many right to lifers are angry about this, but legally and politically speaking, I just don’t see a national ban anytime in the near future.