After 50 years of prayers and battling for the hearts and minds of the public, the efforts by millions of people to educate, inform through science, and persuade through faith have finally resulted in overturning that unjust decision in Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court in 1973.
The battlefield for the hearts and minds now shifts to our communities. We must fight harder than ever to win the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens, convincing them that life in its tiniest condition must be respected and protected. It is abundantly clear from every point of view that the human life growing in the womb is a developing person. Nobody has dared to claim a point at which the developing baby suddenly is transformed from a “thing” into a “person.” As an ancient philosopher has said, “What will be human, is human.”
However, the pro-abortion people are smart, determined, and well funded. They will be relentless in pursuit of the goal to have abortion on demand at any stage of pregnancy as well as the right to allow a child born alive to die from neglect if it is not wanted. Their weapons are fear, deceit, intimidation, violence…and they use these to keep pro-life people from running for office at all levels, from school boards to US presidency. It is not an exaggeration and not an inflammatory statement; it is in our news stories daily. It is all about power and money.
The SCOTUS opinion in the Dobbs case was released on June 24, but the judgement was released on June 26 (a technicality related to the timeline for so-called “trigger” laws in various states). Such laws will take effect at a time after the date of the judgement. Thirteen states had laws in place on June 26, 2022 that were “triggered” to take effect and regulate abortion at an interval after the decision in Roe v. Wade was overturned. Texas had such a “trigger” law, and it will be discussed below.
However, Texas had a law on the books from 1925 that banned abortion without exception that, while unenforceable since the Roe decision in January 1973, was never repealed. Immediately upon the release of the judgement on June 26, the law became enforceable as it was written, and long before the “trigger” law was scheduled to take effect. Although this was challenged, the Texas Supreme Court ruled on July 2 that Texas could enforce the law because it was passed by the state legislature. However, no attempt has been made to do so.
In Texas, the Human Life Protection Act was passed in 2011 and finally took effect August 25. New human life is now protected from abortion beginning at the moment of conception. Abortion is a first degree felony punishable by up to 99 years in prison and a fine of at least $100,000 and the Medical Board “must” revoke the license of an offender. There are exceptions for medical emergencies, ectopic pregnancies, and treatment of miscarriage. There is no liability for women.
Abortion clinics in Texas have closed. Some have declared that they will move to a state where they can do abortions. That has obvious monetary implications for selling property, breaking leases, and incurring the expense associated with moving to a new location out of state. Some clinics say they will stay in Texas and focus on health care for women, including birth control and sterilization. However, converting from the low overhead, high income business of abortion to a high overhead, (comparatively) low income practice of OB-GYN in competition with numerous established doctors having good reputations, being board certified, and having hospital privileges does not sound like a good business plan (even if a doctor could be found to start such a practice). It is felt that most such practices would not produce sufficient income to pay the bills.
At the same time that prior abortion clinics are facing financial hardship, Texas appropriated $100,000,000 in the current 2-year budget for the highly successful existing Alternative to Abortion program. This helps women bring the baby to term and keep the baby or place for adoption. Support is available for at least three years after birth from nearly 200 pregnancy centers, maternity homes, and adoption centers. About 150,000 women are served every year.
The Texas Medicaid program already pays for over half of all prenatal care, births, and follow-up care for mothers and babies. The Healthy Texas Women program for low-income women also provides all manner of gynecological services as well as general medical care. https://www.healthytexaswomen.org/
In other news, the defeat of the proposed Value Them Both amendment to the Kansas constitution was disappointing, gaining only 41% of the vote. It would have clarified that the state constitution does not “create or secure a right to abortion” and “does not require government funding of abortion.” In 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court found a right to abortion in the state constitution that nobody knew was there, similar to the way in which the SCOTUS decided the Roe case in 1973, with the bizarre finding that a right to privacy meant a right to abortion.
Although this result in Kansas was much celebrated by those favoring unregulated abortion, a similar amendment in Louisiana passed by 62% in 2020. Similar amendments were also passed in Tennessee in 2014 and then in Alabama and West Virginia in 2018. Lawmakers in Iowa and Pennsylvania are pushing for similar measures.
An article by Michael New https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-new-york-times-misleads-on-kansas-pro-life-defeat/ explains a number of factors which likely caused the amendment in Kansas to fail, not the least of which was the huge amount of outside money poured into negative advertising by pro-abortion supporters that would stand to lose a lot of money and the associated political power.
However, the same amendment as that defeated in Kansas is on the November ballet in Kentucky, and a Montana proposition would make all infants born alive at any stage of development a legal person entitled to medical care, a point especially relevant to abortion survivors who are often left to die. At the same time, California and Vermont will try to make the right to an abortion part of their state constitutions.
Michigan had a “trigger” law from 1931 that banned abortion except to save the life of the mother. However, a judge has issued a temporary restraining order against enforcement following a lawsuit by (unsurprisingly) Planned Parenthood. A campaign to place on the ballet in November an initiative to amend the Michigan state constitution to affirm the right of women to make their own decisions about abortion and birth control without state regulation has received a huge number of signatures and is expected to be on the ballet. However, pro-life activists are very strong in the state. Furthermore, the upcoming re-election of the democrat governor, attorney general, and members of the US House are hotly contested, and these elections may well lead to push back against their pro-abortion policies as well.
Finally, to close out this update, Indiana became the first state after the Dobbs decision to pass a new law banning abortion, and by huge margins. The law will take effect September 12, and has exceptions for rape and incest (up to 10 weeks gestation), to protect the life and health of the mother, and if there is a lethal fetal abnormality. Abortions may also be performed only in hospital owned facilities, so all abortion clinics will lose their licenses, and any doctor performing an abortion “shall” lose their medical license.
This action followed the scandalous story of a pregnant 9-year-old rape victim (as unlikely as it would be for a girl that young to be ovulating) who traveled from Ohio to Indiana to get a legal abortion (which occurred just after she reached age 10). In Ohio, the fetal heartbeat law prohibits abortion after a fetal heartbeat is heard (typically by 6-8 weeks) and makes no exception for rape. The rapist was a 27-year-old man from Guatemala living in the US illegally. DNA studies on the aborted fetus confirmed he was the father.
Returning to where we started, the battle for the hearts and minds of the people is now fully joined in our communities, and it is likely to be long and arduous. However, I have no doubt that the vast majority of people will ultimately accept that the tiniest growing human is a person, and that women should be offered everything she needs to have a healthy baby. That is our hope. Let us be proud that we have joined the battle.