Participants in a demonstration against Proposition 1 outside the California capitol in Sacramento, Oct. 6, 2022. / Photo courtesy of California’s No on Prop. 1 Campaign
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 9, 2022 / 09:22 am (CNA).
Ballot initiatives to protect and expand abortion passed across the nation on Election Day.
Americans in five states voted on the issue of abortion during the 2022 midterm elections. Three states — California, Michigan, and Vermont — proposed constitutional amendments to advance abortion. All three passed.
At the same time, citizens in Kentucky weighed a pro-life amendment and Montana voters considered a measure that promises to protect babies who are born alive after attempted abortions. Kentucky voted no to its pro-life measure. Montana’s results are still coming in, with a current majority voting no.
Stephen Billy, who serves as vice president of state affairs at the national pro-life group SBA Pro-Life America, early Wednesday morning stressed that life is still winning.
“Anyone arguing abortion is winning is missing what happened tonight,” he told CNA. “We had strong pro-life candidates at the federal and state level win because they seized on life as a winning issue and exposed the extreme taxpayer-funded abortion until birth policy of their opponents.”
“We know life is a winning issue, we know how to win on life, and we know the American people reject the extreme policy of Planned Parenthood and their candidates,” he added. “Going forward, we have to do better at using our winning strategy and using it to fight back against the millions of dollars Big Abortion puts into ballot initiatives to cause confusion and hide their extreme policy. When the voters see the abortion industry pushing abortion on demand, they reject it — and if we focus on exposing that extreme policy we will win.”
The ballot measures on Election Day follow the Supreme Court’s June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and freed states to legislate on abortion. They also come after a pro-life amendment recently failed in Kansas.
California: Proposition 1
Proposition 1 will amend California’s constitution to explicitly protect abortion after citizens voted to pass it.
As of mid-Wednesday morning, the New York Times reported that 65.1% voted yes to Proposition 1 and 34.9% voted no, with 41% of the votes in.
Following the election results, Catherine Hadro, director of media relations for California’s No on Proposition 1 campaign, stressed a disconnect between what Proposition 1 allows and what California voters support.
“We know that more than 80% of Californians reject late-term abortion. They oppose late-term abortion,” she previously told CNA. “And that’s exactly what Proposition 1 would allow.”
The proposition reads: “The state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions, which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives.”
California currently allows abortion for any reason before viability, when a baby can survive outside the womb — generally considered to begin around 24 weeks of pregnancy. After viability, California allows abortion when a woman’s life or health is threatened.
The California Catholic Conference encouraged pro-life voters to say “no” to Proposition 1, calling it “an expensive and misleading ballot measure that allows unlimited late-term abortions — for any reason, at any time, even moments before birth, paid for by tax dollars.”
A campaign for the amendment led by pro-abortion groups, called Yes on Proposition 1, argued that Proposition 1 would “ensure that, in California, people continue to have the power to control their own bodies and personal decisions.”
Michigan: Proposal 3
Michigan’s proposed constitutional amendment, Proposal 3, will advance abortion in that state.
As of mid-Wednesday morning, the New York Times reported that 56% voted yes to the proposal and 44% voted no, with 87% of the votes in.
On the ballot, the amendment is identified as a “proposal to amend the state constitution to establish new individual right to reproductive freedom, including right to make all decisions about pregnancy and abortion; allow state to regulate abortion in some cases; and forbid prosecution of individuals exercising established right.”
In Michigan, women can obtain abortions for any reason before viability. After viability, abortion is permitted to save the woman’s life.
The Citizens to Support MI Women and Children coalition, which includes the Michigan Catholic Conference, advised pro-life citizens to vote no on the amendment. The group said it would “radically distort Michigan’s Constitution to create a new unlimited right to abortion.”
“This poorly-worded amendment would repeal dozens of state laws, including our state’s ban on tax-funded abortions, the partial-birth abortion ban, and fundamentally alter the parent-child relationship by preventing parents from having input on their children’s health,” the group said.
In support of the amendment, Reproductive Freedom for All argued that “in addition to ensuring access to a broad range of reproductive health care, this amendment would make sure no one goes to prison for providing safe medical care.”
Vermont: Article 22/Proposal 5
In Vermont, citizens voted to pass the constitutional amendment Article 22, also known as Proposal 5, which promotes abortion.
As of mid-Wednesday morning, the New York Times reported that 77.4% voted yes to the proposal and 22.6% voted no, with more than 95% of the votes in.
It reads: “That an individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course and shall not be denied or infringed unless justified by a compelling State interest achieved by the least restrictive means.”
Abortion is legal up until birth in the state.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington, which includes the entire state of Vermont, published a piece in its diocesan bulletin warning that the amendment “promises to enshrine unlimited, unregulated abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy in our state’s founding document” and “would permanently block any attempt to protect the unborn — even those who can survive outside the womb.”
Vermont Right to Life Committee urged citizens to vote no.
Led by pro-abortion groups, Vermont for Reproductive Liberty Ballot Committee argued: “We need this amendment because important medical decisions should be guided by a patient’s health and well-being, not by a politician’s beliefs.”
Kentucky: Amendment 2
Kentucky voted against a pro-life measure — Amendment 2 — which says the state’s constitution does not protect abortion.
As of mid-Wednesday morning, the New York Times reported that 52.6% voted no to the amendment and 47.4% voted yes, with 88% of the votes in.
It reads: “To protect human life, nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.”
Kentucky currently prohibits abortion with exceptions for saving a woman’s life or preventing serious risk to her physical health.
The Yes for Life alliance, which includes the Catholic Conference of Kentucky, asked pro-life citizens to vote yes. The group said that the amendment’s language “will prevent state judges from asserting their own preferences over the will of legislators and the voters.”
Opposing the amendment, the Protect Kentucky Access coalition claimed that the amendment would “pave the way for the state to ban abortion in all cases.”
Montana: Legislative Referendum 131 (LR-131)
Voters in Montana considered Legislative Referendum 131, which says it will protect babies who are born alive after attempted abortions.
As of Wednesday morning, the New York Times reported that 52.6% voted no to the amendment and 47.7% voted yes, with 80% of the votes in.
It reads: “An act adopting the born-alive infant protection act; providing that infants born alive, including infants born alive after an abortion, are legal persons; requiring health care providers to take necessary actions to preserve the life of a born-alive infant; providing a penalty; providing that the proposed act be submitted to the qualified electors of Montana; and providing an effective date.”
Montana law allows abortion before viability. Abortion is also permitted after viability to save a woman’s life or prevent serious risk to her physical health.
SBA Pro-Life America’s Katie Glenn previously told CNA that she found the ballot initiative in Montana — a state she said has been getting progressively more pro-life — the most interesting.
“I think that one’s different than the other four, which are all very much time-gestational bans, in that this is not a pro-life/pro-choice issue,” she said. “This is about providing lifesaving care to a child who’s already been born.”
Opposing the referendum, Compassion for Montana Families claimed that it “would introduce extreme penalties for medical providers who, at the family’s request, do not take a dying infant away from its parents in order to perform invasive and even painful medical treatments in tragic circumstances where they have no chance of survival.”
[…]
@Principled Neutrality.
“Judges must not interfere with this posture of principled neutrality. Such a position does not have deep roots in the classical legal tradition, which certainly does not hold that the law can be neutral on essential questions of morality, letting the voters decide such basic questions as who is alive” (Pat Smith).
The question posed is whether a decision to save the life of the survivor of abortion should rest with the people rather than a judicial precept. Ironically, the question relates to the argument against abortion by Justice Kavanaugh, that the Constitution is ‘neutral’ insofar as abortion rights, meaning the Constitution does not refer to abortion at all.
Smith quotes Ross Douthat’s complex response, that the judge in deciding on neutrality did not, it seems, say all that should be said, in consideration of the decision left with the people and the Montana vote against a referendum to protect the infant. At first reading it appears Douthat’s nuanced response is correct.
My response to this complex, sad outcome stemming from the Supreme Court argument for Constitutional neutrality on abortion resulting in the argument for neutrality, the decision on the right to life of the abortion surviving infant left with the voter that resulted in the defeat of the referendum to protect that right – actually has juridical foundation in the Common Law [the Common Law of England which in practice refused a right to abort infants] adopted by most states upon independence from British rule. That argument deeply rooted in tradition finds its juridical basis in the natural law, a major component of the traditions incorporated in the Common Law [see Dissenting Opinion Justice Robert R Beezer in Compassion in Dying v State of Washington US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit argued and submitted October 1995 Filed March 1996].
Although the Washington case addressed a right to suicide, justice Beezer employs argument contra abortion rights in hi Opinion citing Bowers v Hardwick 478 US 186 1986. Bowers: “These tests are distinct from the broader nonfundamental liberty inquiry of Casey. The sweeping description of liberty in Casey is never characterized as fundamental under the Constitution; rather, its wide purview covers all liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, non fundamental as well as fundamental. The Casey plurality states repeatedly that it is the combined force of stare decisis and liberty that protects a woman’s right to abortion. Casey 112 S.Ct. at 2804, 2808. This implies that liberty alone would be insufficient to support a new fundamental right to abortion”.
Douthat’s rationale would be correct insofar as the Constitution that as written does not defend a right to abortion, nor does Common Law and the natural law, upon which our American, and British legal tradition find legal definition. In effect, the right to life of the unborn and survival of the aborted infant does not rest with the will of the general public. That right is a justice right requiring protection by the law.
What an enigmatic motif. The monk’s eyes seem ablaze almost too as “looking ahead” and his beard is aflame!
“Armageddon”
Jesus tells us that His Second Coming will be like the days before the Great Flood, and that no one will know when the disaster will hit. Well! The Survivors, Noah and his family, knew when the great disaster would hit.
Matthew 24:36 The Unknown Day and Hour.
“But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. For as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. In [those] days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered the ark. They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away. So will it be [also] at the coming of the Son of Man.
There is not one, but two great Apocalyptic ‘Anti-christs’. One at the beginning of Messianic Reign, the Matthew 24 ‘Desolating Abomination’, and the one at the end of Messianic Reign, when free-willed earth ends in Daniel 9. In between the two ‘Desolating Abominations’ Jesus will Rule on earth, with and through His Church, the Catholic Church, in His ‘Holy City’, which is the Revelation 21 ‘New Jerusalem’, for the Daniel 9, 63 weeks, which, if Jesus Second Coming Comes now in 2022, would put doomsday off till the year 34,000.
Daniel 9:26
After the sixty-two weeks an anointed one shall be cut down with no one to help him. And the people of a leader who will come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. His end shall come in a flood; until the end of the war, which is decreed, there will be desolation. For one week he shall make a firm covenant with the many; Half the week he shall abolish sacrifice and offering; In their place shall be the desolating abomination until the ruin that is decreed is poured out upon the desolator.”
St. Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3, that in the Great Flood, God destroyed the original heavens and the earth, and then made a new heaven and earth. St. Peter, along with John of Revelation, tell us that the heavens and earth will be destroyed again, and again God will make us a third, new heavens and new earth, for the meek, humble and pure of heart, after the unrepentant wicked are removed from the earth, by the wrath of God. The Revelation 21 “The New Heaven and the New Earth”, third, ‘New Heaven and Earth’ will be Jesus’ Kingdom Come on free-willed Earth, ‘The New Jerusalem’, where Jesus will be married to His Bride the Catholic Church, and His presence reside within her Body of people, in the Restored Israel, in the Restored Garden of Eden, like Adam and Eve lived in the Presence of God in the original Garden of Eden.
‘Jesus is Getting Married’
http://www.apocalypseangel.com/married.html
Acts of the Apostles 1:6 The Ascension of Jesus.
When they had gathered together they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He answered them, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority. But you will receive power when the holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.
2 Peter 3:3
Know this first of all, that in the last days scoffers will come to scoff, living according to their own desires and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? From the time when our ancestors fell asleep, everything has remained as it was from the beginning of creation.” They deliberately ignore the fact that the heavens existed of old and earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God; through these the world that then existed was destroyed, deluged with water. The present heavens and earth have been reserved by the same word for fire, kept for the day of judgment and of destruction of the godless. But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard “delay,” but he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a mighty roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire, and the earth and everything done on it will be found out. Since everything is to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought [you] to be, conducting yourselves in holiness and devotion, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved in flames and the elements melted by fire. But according to his promise we await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
Psalms 97
The LORD is king; let the earth rejoice; let the many islands be glad. Cloud and darkness surround the Lord; justice and right are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him; everywhere it consumes the foes. Lightning illumines the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim God’s justice; all peoples see his glory.
Psalms 96:11
Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice; let the sea and what fills it resound; let the plains be joyful and all that is in them. Then let all the trees of the forest rejoice before the LORD who comes, who comes to govern the earth, To govern the world with justice and the peoples with faithfulness.
Daniel 7:11
I watched, then, from the first of the arrogant words which the horn spoke, until the beast was slain and its body thrown into the fire to be burnt up. The other beasts, which also lost their dominion, were granted a prolongation of life for a time and a season. As the visions during the night continued, I saw One like a son of man coming, on the clouds of heaven; When he reached the Ancient One and was presented before him, He received dominion, glory, and kingship; nations and peoples of every language serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed.
Acts of the Apostles 26:17
I shall deliver you from this people and from the Gentiles to whom I send you, to open their eyes that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God,
According to Jesus’ locutions to St. Faustina (1930s), Jesus is Second Coming to remove, only the unrepentant wicked, from the earth soon. So, be sure to receive Jesus’ Sacraments of Divine Mercy, this Divine Mercy Sunday. It is only Jesus’ Divine Mercy which will shelter you through our impending Matthew 24 Great Chastisement.
Acts of the Apostles 26:17
I shall deliver you from this people and from the Gentiles to whom I send you, to open their eyes that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God