Pro-lifers Celebrate Anniversary of Roe’s Demise

The nation is celebrating a special anniversary today. One year ago, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, removing federal protections for abortion.

SCOTUS handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on June 24, 2022, ending Roe’s 50-year reign of murder.

The ruling stated, “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.… The authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

Here’s the moment crowds outside the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., heard the news:

In the weeks and months that followed, 24 states implemented laws that restrict abortion to one degree or another, and some pundits claim the SCOTUS decision helped Democrats in the November mid-term elections. Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who is staunchly pro-life, aired his thoughts on Newsmax:

When you look at what’s really a controversial decision, it was actually the Roe v. Wade decision itself 50 years ago when the Supreme Court invented new constitutional authorities. The Dobbs decision, the 24th of June last year, the Supreme Court came back and looked at it and said there was no basis for the Roe v. Wade decision.

The decision about abortion historically has been a decision that’s made by states and by elected officials, not by judges. And so, what the Supreme Court did is they turned it back over to the American people again. So the American people can decide this issue. And so, as you mentioned, about half of the states have put in some sort of restrictions on abortion to be able to protect the value of every single child.

And some say it’s actually increased the number of abortions in their state. This is the big national conversation. Best we can tell at this point, we’ve got about 200,000 children that are alive today that would not have been alive if it wasn’t for the Dobbs decision. So that’s 200,000 children that will be headed to kindergarten in a few years, that will be playing on the playground. It’s a remarkable thing for each of those kids.

— U.S. Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.)

Celebrations, Rallies and Protests

Pro-life groups across the nation are holding celebrations today, commemorating the anniversary.

Students for Life of America is hosting a “National Celebrate Life Day” at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., where they will unveil a new program called “The 14^th Amendment for All.” The group hopes that unborn children will soon be legally defined as persons with equal protections under law.

Other rallies are set for places such as Chicago, Illinois; Trenton, New Jersey; and Orange Park, Florida. The Pro-Life Union of Greater Philadelphia is holding a March for Life, as is the group Pro-Life Wisconsin in Madison.

Activists are particularly busy in states where America’s holocaust is still enshrined in law. Pro-Life Michigan is sponsoring a protest outside the Westland abortion facility, while the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising will hold a vigil for victims of abortion outside Planned Parenthood in Washington, D.C.

They want everyone to remember that, although the Dobbs decision removed federal abortion protections, the murder of the unborn is still legal in 21 states and the District of Columbia.

Personhood of the Unborn

A map provided by the Family Research Council shows highlighted in red the states that have legalized abortion until the moment of birth. Many of them already allowed infanticide, but a few states took extra steps post-Dobbs. For example, last November, California, Michigan, and Vermont added to their state constitutions the so-called “right” to kill unborn babies. In January, Minnesota’s governor signed a bill that made abortion a “fundamental right” by legal statute.

However, some states that passed pro-life laws are shackled by liberal judges. For example, last October an Arizona state appeals court enjoined a pre-Roe law protecting unborn life at conception. Similar situations have stymied pro-life bills in places such as Utah, Wyoming, and Indiana.

The map indicates the chaos that has resulted from Dobbs — a confused mix of pro-life and pro-death states. Ultimately, life is still subject to the whim of the majority and/or liberal judges, when the opposite should be the case. Just as the federal government does not have authority to “legalize” murder, so states, localities, and individuals have no “right”‘ or authority to determine that killing babies in the womb is okay. 

That is the point that syndicated columnist and political analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano made about Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs. Here are his comments from an interview last September with The New American senior editor Alex Newman:

What [Alito] should have done was to define the baby in the womb as a person. Is the baby in the womb a person? Of course the baby in the womb is a person. The baby has human parents and all of the genomic material within her to develop to full post-natal personhood.

If the baby in the womb is a person, then all abortion is murder, because the 14th Amendment requires the States to protect life, liberty, and property equally. So just as it must protect your life and mine, and the lives of the people watching and listening to us now, it would have to protect the lives of the most helpless among us, which are babies in the womb.

Instead, by suggesting that somehow — not suggesting, ruling — that somehow the states have the authority either through their legislatures or by popular vote to take a class of human beings — here, babies in the womb — and decide that they don’t have the protection of the law, well that is reprehensible. I mean, the right to live is a gift from God. It’s the most fundamental right there is, and it’s not subject to majoritarian impulses. I mean, stated differently, you don’t need the approval of the majority of voters in order to live. You just need the protection of the law so that your mother and her doctors can’t kill you while you’re a baby in the womb.

— Judge Andrew Napolitano

Lives Saved

Nevertheless, it looks like some lives have been spared by the Dobbs decision. Recall that Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma estimated some 200,000 children are alive today who would otherwise have been aborted.

Other groups that you might assume have an incentive to inflate these numbers report more modest success (not their term, but ours). According to statistics compiled by the leftist Society of Family Planning, Dobbs saved 24,290 babies from slaughter between July 2022 and March 2023, compared to the pre-Dobbs baseline.

There were an estimated 93,575 fewer so-called legal abortions in states that banned the brutality, but that number rose by 69,285 over the same period in states that allow infanticide. If these numbers are correct, they indicate that a lot of people traveled from pro-life states such as Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Louisiana, where abortions plummeted. For instance, data show that the number of out-of-state patients doubled in Colorado, which allows abortion up to the moment of birth. Those numbers went from 14 percent in 2021 to 28 percent in 2022.

As for overall numbers, Planned Parenthood also records fewer abortions in its recently released Annual Report, forebodingly entitled “Relentless.”

Planned Destruction

Its clinics butchered 9,305 more babies in 2021 than they did in 2022. That’s a record decrease. However, over the same period Planned Parenthood net assets increased by $200 million, partly thanks to you, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer. Uncle Sam gave the nation’s largest abortion provider $670.4 million of your tax money last year, an increase of $37 million over the previous year.

That’s despite Planned Parenthood representatives caught on tape in 2015 selling aborted body parts.

According to the Center for Medical Progress, in December of 2017, two of the bioscience companies involved in the scandal admitted guilt for illegally selling fetal tissues for profit from Planned Parenthood offices in California. They were shut down in a $7.8 million settlement.

However, LifeNews reported that Planned Parenthood raked in as much as $23 million annually from the gruesome practice.

And it wasn’t until the Trump administration that the federal government canceled its contract with another bioresearch company, Advanced Bioscience Resources, that “buys and sells aborted baby parts from Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses.”

So one must ask where all the newly granted taxpayer money is going, since abortions are down, and since Planned Parenthood recently announced upcoming staff reductions at its headquarters. A spokesman for the group denied that the change reflects money problems, but attributed it to a financial shift of resources from headquarters to Planned Parenthood affiliates throughout the country.

Analysis of the group’s Annual Report by Melanie Israel of The Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal contains the likely explanation.

Besides prioritizing abortion services, Israel argues, “Planned Parenthood’s expansion of gender services is likely the primary driver behind the rise in procedures it categorizes as ‘other.’” In one year, that category jumped from about 16,000 procedures to more than 256,000.

Mail-order Abortions

Along with outright funding, the federal government is using other means to promote extremely dangerous chemical abortions. In April the reputedly pro-life Supreme Court issued an order ensuring the abortion drug, mifepristone, will remain available by mail order.

The pill, also known as RU-486, cuts off nutrients to the growing baby, who then dies inside the mother’s womb. One to two days later, the woman takes another pill, misoprostol, to induce labor and deliver the dead baby. The experience is painful and involves heavy and prolonged bleeding.

It is also extremely risky, as Dr. Christina Francis explained to The New American. She is a board-certified OB/GYN and CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynocologists (AAPLOG).

First of all we know that even with an in-person visit, medication abortions have a 4 times higher complication rate than do surgical abortions. That’s even under the best circumstances, where they’re seen in person, they have an ultrasound, all of that. What’s more dangerous now about women obtaining these pills without an in-person visit is we know that the complication rate goes up exponentially the farther along in pregnancy a woman is. And even the American College of OB-GYNs says that up to 50 percent of women will be wrong about how far along they are in their pregnancy and need an ultrasound to confirm that. Well, if they’re not being seen in person, we don’t know how far along they are.

Second, they need to be screened for ectopic pregnancies. So, one of the common narratives that we’re hearing right now is, “Oh, women are going to die from ectopic pregnancies because abortion is restricted.” Which of course is false.

But all of these abortion proponents are talking about how dangerous ectopic pregnancies are. And they are! It’s one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in the first trimester. It occurs in one in 50 pregnancies. Well, women who are getting these pills online, they’re not being screened for ectopic pregnancy. People giving them these pills have no way of knowing whether or not that pregnancy is in the uterus or not. And if they take these pills, number one, the pills don’t end an ectopic pregnancy. They’re not effective treatment for that. And number two, the symptoms of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy are exactly the same as they symptoms of a medication abortion, which are abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. And so women are going to be losing precious minutes at home, thinking that these symptoms are perfectly normal, when in fact they’re rupturing their ectopic pregnancy. And if they don’t seek medical treatment immediately, they could die from this. This is extremely dangerous. Again, no matter where you stand on the issue of abortion, you should be opposed to this. This is frank medical malpractice and should not be being advocated for by any medical groups whatsoever.

And then a couple of other dangers associated with online abortion pills, you know, without an in-person visit, is blood-type screenings. So women who have a negative blood type need to receive a medication called RhoGAM, in order to prevent complications in future pregnancies.

And then we also know that many women feel pressured or coerced into their abortions. Many women who are trafficked have forced abortions. And how on earth is anyone going to be screened for coercion or trafficking or abuse when they’re just obtaining pills online? This is the perfect setup for a trafficker or an abuser to be able to obtain these pills and force abortions on their victims. So nothing could be further from female empowerment, from empowering women to have control over their own healthcare decisions, than this setup of online abortion pills without any sort of medical supervision.

— Dr. Christina Francis, CEO of AAPLOG

False Flags

Francis also said that, despite claims to the contrary, there are no state laws that prohibit treating life-threatening conditions or miscarriages. Nevertheless, there are women who insist their lives and health are endangered by the demise of Roe.

Amanda Zurawski testifed before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in April, claiming that she almost died because she was denied an abortion. You can hear part of her speech here:

She is suing the state of Texas over this claim. It’s a me-too phenomenon that has cropped up since the Dobbs decision was finalized last June.

YouTube marketer Marlena Stell made the claim that her doctor denied miscarriage care because of the Texas abortion ban, and CNN snapped the story right up. They did not bother to ask why Stell did not report the doctor for medical malpractice, thereby protecting other women from the same fate. Nor did CNN point out that post-Dobbs abortion bans apply only to elective abortions, not to medical procedures related to miscarriage or other pregnancy complications that require medical intervention.

Another detail they left out is the fact that no abortion clinic is equipped to handle these types of situations. Abortion mills target healthy babies. According to Francis, if someone with emergent complications showed up at an abortion facility, they’d be sent to the nearest ER, where they would receive immediate and life-saving care.

Born Alive

As for the real solution to the abortion debate — declaring the personhood of the unborn, so they have equal protection under the law — who better to summon as a witness than someone who was born alive after what the industry callously terms a “failed abortion?” Gianna Jessen gave this powerful testimony of her survival:

I’m adopted and my biological mother was 17 and so was my biological father. She was seven-and-a-half months pregnant when she decided to go to Planned Parenthood, which is the largest abortion provider in the world. And they counseled her to have a late-term saline abortion, which is a saline salt solution that is injected into the mother’s womb. The baby gulps that solution. It burns the baby inside and out. And then [the mother] is to deliver a dead baby within 24 hours. And to everyone’s great shock and surprise, I didn’t arrive dead but alive on April 6, 1977 in a Los Angeles County abortion clinic.

What’s fantastic about this — about the perfect timing of my arrival — is that the abortionist was not on duty yet. So he wasn’t even given the opportunity to continue on with his plan for my life, which was death.

And so I was delivered alive, as I’ve already said, after 18 hours. I should be blind. I should be burned. I should be dead. And yet I’m not! You know what is fantastic vindication is the fact that the abortionist had to sign my birth certificate. So I know who he is. And it also says, for any skeptic listening, on my medical records: “Born during saline abortion.” Ha! They didn’t win!

Gianna Jessen, abortion survivor

More than 1,700 babies such as Jessen survive abortions every year, according to the Abortion Survivors Network, but too often the immediate aftermath is infanticide through strangulation, suffocation, or abandonment. Take the case of Kermit Gosnell, the former Pennsylvania abortionist who is now serving life in prison without parole after a 2013 conviction of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies born alive. Former staff members testified that it was “standard procedure” for Gosnell to use scissors to sever the spinal cords of infants who survived abortions. A grand jury report said that the “killings became so routine that no one could put an exact number on them.”

The problem is so prolific that some states have enacted born-alive laws to ensure infants receive appropriate medical care when they survive attempts on their lives. However, the Family Research Council records only 18 states that have strong and effective born-alive protections.

Even if the fact that some children survive abortions is not enough to argue for the personhood of the unborn, consider that when a pregnant woman is killed, her assailant is charged with two counts of murder, not one.