by Frank Holmes, reporter
Every January, near the date that the Supreme Court legalized abortion in the Roe v. Wade decision, hundreds of thousands of people flock to Washington, D.C., to attend the annual March for Life.
But soon, they may gather on another date, for another reason: December 1.
Because this December, the High Court’s justices have agreed to hear a case that could lead to overturning the 1973 Supreme Court decision that declared abortion a “constitutional right” nationwide.
SCOTUS will hear arguments in a case known as Mississippi v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Jackson “Women’s Health Organization” is the business in the state that performs abortions. It’s suing Mississippi, because it passed a law that protects unborn babies from being aborted if they are 15 weeks or older.
That’s a direct challenge to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case that invented the “right” to abortion out of thin air. It will be the Supreme Court’s biggest ruling in decades.
In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court said “sexual rights” fall under a “right to privacy,” even though there’s not a word in the Constitution about “sexual rights.”
Then the justices decided that this new “right” could not be regulated—that is, limited—by the states in any way at least until the end of the first trimester. They believed that a baby couldn’t live outside the mother’s room until around this point.
The justices said this moment, called “viability,” happened around 28 weeks of development, even though they had no scientific expertise.
But by the time justices revisited the idea in 1992, the science had changed. At that time, babies could live on their own by 24 weeks. So Planned Parenthood v. Casey brought that limit down, and legislatures passed new right-to-life laws, like ending the horrific practice of partial-birth abortion on viable babies.
But time moves on, and science progresses. Today, viability could be as early as 21 weeks—and the Supreme Court ruling is still stuck in outdated science… and completely ignores the scientific fact that life begins at the moment of conception.
There’s another issue, which comes up in the new Supreme Court case: What if states want to protect babies for some reason other than viability? What if they think unborn babies deserve protection simply for being human beings?
Mississippi lawmakers decided to force that question. In 2018, they passed a state law that protects unborn babies starting at 15 weeks.
The law says that it wants to end abortion that early, because unborn babies can feel pain—excruciating pain—during an abortion. A second-trimester abortion that would take place around that time involves ripping a baby’s limbs off, one at a time, crushing the baby’s skull, then reassembling its little body to make sure the abortionist didn’t leave any fetal parts inside the mother’s body, which could cause her serious infection or even death.
The state says it has an inherent interest in protecting any of its citizens from being tortured to death—and that sounds like the definition of torture to lawmakers.
The law is far from a total ban on abortions. It still gives women more than three months to get an abortion if they want one. And 91 percent of all abortions take place during the first trimester.
It’s not even clear the law would have much of an impact on its own abortion office, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which says it stops performing abortions at 16 weeks. “It is a prohibition for one week,” Paul Barnes, a special assistant attorney general, argued before a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit U.S. Appeals Court in 2019.
But it’s too much for members of the pro-abortion movement, who immediately took the state to court. “The consequences of a Roe reversal would be devastating,” said Nancy Northrup, CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a group that levies lawsuits against states on behalf of the abortion industry.
It would be devastating to the abortion industry’s bottom line. And it would be devastating to Democratic politicians who pocket their campaign donations. Planned Parenthood, one of the largest abortion providers in the U.S., pledged $45 million to Democrats last year.
And the Democrats keep your tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood for “family planning.”
The Supreme Court could overturn the one case that makes that never-ending sweetheart deal possible by repealing Roe v. Wade.
Thanks to two Republican presidents—and a conservative movement that finally refused to accept any more justices like David Souter and John Roberts—the Supreme Court has a pro-life majority. Six members are said to be “conservative,” although that includes the born-again liberal John Roberts.
That still leaves five justices—and five is enough to take at least a few dollars out of the abortion industry’s hands, take a few abortion industry dollars out of the Democrats’ hands, and take the scalpel and forceps out of an abortionists hands.
It’s enough to let more mothers take their babies in their hands. And it’s enough to let babies’ take their lives into their own hands… and live.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”