When The Number 45 is a Bad Thing

While most conservatives rejoice about having Donald Trump as the 45^th President of the United States, the number 45 has a much more negative connotation this week.  Today marks the 45^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the extremely controversial Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide; which still divides much of the country today.  As Vice President Pence pointed out, “45 years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States turned its back on the inalienable right to life.”   

 

 

If nothing else, Roe illustrates the importance of picking good judges.  Liberals have nearly 20/20 foresight when it comes to the judges they put on the bench, while Republicans have had a much lower rate of success in appointing real conservatives to the Supreme Court.  When asked about the biggest regrets of his Presidency, Dwight Eisenhower reportedly said, “I have made two mistakes, and they are both sitting on the Supreme Court.”  At the time of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court consisted of six Republican-appointed justices and three justices appointed by Democrats.  Three Nixon appointees, Chief Justice Warren Burger and associate justices Lewis Powell and Harry Blackmun, joined by Eisenhower appointees William Brennan (one of his presidential regrets) and Potter Stewart, Johnson appointee Thurgood Marshall and Roosevelt appointee William Douglas agreed that the “right to privacy” protected a woman’s “right” to have an abortion. The only dissenting votes came from Nixon appointee William Rehnquist, who would later become Chief Justice, and Byron White, a Kennedy appointee.

 

Over the years, the Democrats have pulled out all of the stops in order to save Roe. The Democrats engaged in a brutal character assassination against Robert Bork, who President Reagan nominated to succeed Justice Powell in July 1987.  As Ann Coulter pointed out, “Within an hour of Reagan’s announcing Robert Bork’s nomination, Sen. Ted Kennedy accused Bork of trying to murder women, segregate blacks, institute a police state and censor speech—everything short of driving a woman into a lake!”  The Democratic-led Senate voted against Bork by a margin of 58-42.  If only Reagan had nominated him one year earlier, when Republicans controlled the Senate, he might have had a fighting chance.  Powell’s seat eventually went to Anthony Kennedy, who still sits on the High Court today.  In 1991, Democrats tried using similar tactics against Clarence Thomas, nominated by President George H.W. Bush to replace retiring Thurgood Marshall.  This time, they rallied around Anita Hill, a former co-worker of Thomas’s at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who came forward with sexual harassment charges against Thomas.  The left’s efforts to derail Thomas’s nomination ultimately failed and he still sits on the bench today, enjoying his reputation in conservative circles as an originalist icon. 

 

Conservatives felt very optimistic about the Supreme Court case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which they saw as a good opportunity to overturn Roe because liberal justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall had retired; with Republican-appointed justices David Souter and Clarence Thomas replacing them.  In this particular case, the Southeastern Pennsylvania branch of the abortion giant Planned Parenthood sued Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey, a pro-life Democrat, over a series of provisions in the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1982. Once again, Republicans’ fumbling on picking justices came back to bite them.  Reagan appointees Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy and Bush appointee David Souter joined with liberal justices Harry Blackmun and John Paul Stevens, also appointed by Republican Presidents, to argue that “matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty provided by the Fourteenth Amendment”; declaring parts of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act requiring women to notify their husbands and parents of their decision to have an abortion unconstitutional.    The use of the subjective phrase “undue burden” in Constitutional law makes me want to throw up.  At the time of the Casey ruling, Republicans had appointed eight of the nine justices on the Supreme Court.  In Casey, six of the eight Republicans ruled with the feminists while Justice White voted with conservative justices Scalia and Rehnquist.  Ann Coulter later listed Kennedy, Brennan, Blackmun, Stevens, O’Connor, Souter and Former Chief Justice Earl Warren as seven reasons why Republican Presidents have lost the right to say “trust me” when it comes to Supreme Court nominations.   

 

Eight years after Planned Parenthood v. Casey, another abortion case came before the Supreme Court; this time involving the brutal practice of partial birth abortion.  The case Stenberg  v. Carhart challenged the state of Nebraska’s ban on partial birth abortion.   Casting the deciding vote, Sandra Day O’Connor agreed with Clinton appointees Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, as well as Republican-appointed Justices David Souter and John Paul Stevens that the law violated the Due Process Clause of the Constitution. I guess this explains why Ann Coulter would refer to O’Connor as “Reagan’s Biggest Mistake.”  In 2003, President George W. Bush signed into law a nationwide ban on partial-birth abortion.  Not surprisingly, it did not take long for the issue of partial-birth abortion to face another legal challenge. By the time the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for the case Gonzales v. Carhart, George W. Bush appointee Samuel Alito had replaced Sandra Day O’Connor.  Therefore, the Court voted 5-4 to uphold the Partial Birth Abortion Act.

 

Ever since the Roe v. Wade decision, pro-life activists have held a “March for Life” in the Capital City.  Those who only rely on the mainstream media for their news might not have known about the March for Life since the evening newscasts on the three “Alphabet soup” networks barely covered the pro-life march; devoting a mere 2 minutes and 6 seconds.  This year’s “March for Life” definitely deserved much more coverage; considering the fact that the President of the United States addressed the crowd.  The mainstream media has effectively done the bidding of the pro-abortion zealots; especially by using the phrase “anti-abortion” as opposed to “pro-life.”  This year, President Trump addressed the guests gathered on the National Mall via satellite from the Rose Garden; making him the first President to address the “March for Life” via video.  Former Presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan had addressed the “March for Life” via audio.  President Trump had already impressed pro-lifers by appointing Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and reinstituting the Mexico City policy, which blocks US taxpayer dollars from subsidizing NGOs that provide abortions.  During his speech, President Trump pointed out that the United States has some of the most permissive abortion laws in the world; finding itself as one of only seven countries that allow elective late-term abortions.  Others included on that list include the dastardly dictatorship of North Korea and China, which has developed quite a reputation for human rights abuse.  He then went on to mention that only 12 percent of Americans support abortion on demand at any time.  Unfortunately, it seems like a higher proportion of our elected officials in Washington hold that ill-advised belief.     

 

On the same day that 2018’s “March for Life” took place, The House of Representatives passed the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act”, which would punish abortion providers who fail to give medical care to infants who survive botched abortions.  All Republicans voted in favor of the bill while only six Democrats supported it.  The bill’s future remains uncertain as it heads to the Senate.  The Senate will need 60 votes to stop a filibuster; the government shutdown proves beyond a reasonable doubt the difficulty in getting 60 Senators to agree on anything.  While more than a dozen Senate Democrats, including Future Vice President Joe Biden, voted for the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act in 2003, today’s Senate Democrats consist of an almost homogeneous group of leftists beholden to the coffers of the pro-abortion lobby.  Surely, at least one pro-choice Democrat will channel his or her inner Wendy Davis in an effort to kill the bill.   

 

While the pro-life movement has found foes in the Democratic Party, Hollywood, and the mainstream media, they have found themselves an ally in science, which continues to work in the pro-life movement’s favor.  Ultrasound technology can detect fetal hearbeats as early as six or seven weeks into a pregnancy, which makes it more difficult to defend abortion after this time. Several states have attempted to pass “fetal heartbeat bills”, which would outlaw abortions as soon as a baby’s heartbeat can be detected via ultrasound.  These bills have all faced resistance either from the judicial branch, which has deemed them unconstitutional, or from state Governors, who vetoed them anticipating a run-in with the Courts. With science on our side, and President Trump’s continued appointments of originalist justices to the United States Federal Courts, pro-lifers have a glimmer of hope that the time when “we will see Roe v. Wade consigned to the ash heap of history where it belongs” will come sooner rather than later.