When The Number 45 is a Bad Thing
While most conservatives rejoice about having Donald
Trump as the 45th President of the United States , the number 45 has a
much more negative connotation this week.
Today marks the 45th 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.
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