Hubris.
The downright arrogance with which the President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, has committed his Administration to “codify the judgment Roe v. Wade“, which on January 22, 1973, legalized abortion. Codifying a judgement that has cost (an estimated) 60 million American lives. Doing that shows a studied cynicism; to put it exceedingly mild.
“To codify Roe v. Wade” is in fact to overreach. It means nailing down the “right” to abortion in the country’s legal system.
In fact, in the United States, there is no law that makes abortion a right, only the interpretation of the Federal Supreme Court’s conclusion that established abortion as a matter of a supposed right to privacy. Only then was it discovered between the lines of the American Constitution. The ruling established, in short, that among the constitutional rights of American women is the right to voluntarily end a pregnancy within 24 weeks of the life of the creature they are carrying. Or, we can frame Roe v. Wade more like this: it was the political opinion of the Supreme Judges that abortion is not illegal.
That opinion then became precedent, a sort of binding opinion… and, as such, established the rule.
In 1992, however, the federal Supreme Court itself effectively restricted abortion. The judgment in Roe v. Wade in fact establishes that within the first trimester of pregnancy, state governments can never prevent abortion. Within the second trimester States may allow it but can impose certain sanitary norms. And during the third trimester abortion, States prohibit abortion except in cases of danger to the health or life of the mother. The judgment in Planned Parenthood v. Casey replaces the “three-quarter criterion” with that of viability of the baby outside the womb. This is how some states have been able to introduce obstacles to abortion over the years.
Survival of the fittest
But pro-abortion people never sleep and today Biden is serving them.
There are two ways to cement the legal precedent into federal law: by parliament or by constitutional amendment. The latter route, although not impossible in itself, sounds like science fiction today. So the Biden-led abortion vanguard will take the parliamentary route where they are counting on a majority in the House and a tie in the Senate to make the savagely pro-abortion Vice President Kamala Harris the tie-breaker in making the crime federal law.
But the monochrome of the “culture of death” that rules the United States has its hours numbered. After almost half a century, in fact, today the country is presented with perhaps the first real opportunity to start on a path that can really, and finally, overturn Roe v. Wade. And it may be able to do so by maximizing on the result produced by the trojan horse judgment of Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Not just eroding as many pieces of it as possible – one after the other, between accelerations and stops – as has been done over and over again using shrewdly the spaces for manoeuvre that have presented themselves from time to time. But really erasing it.
Now, that route starts in Mississippi. On May 17, the Supreme Court of that Deep South state announced that it had taken up the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization: revolving around a 2018 law known as the “Gestational Age Act” (HB 1510), which prohibits abortion after the 15th week of pregnancy under the ruling of Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Apparently, it won’t be discussed until the fall and a ruling is expected no earlier than summer 2022. But the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has produced a 6-3 majority of federal Supreme Court justices who identify as mostly conservative and anti-abortion. Can a federal Supreme Court composed like this, (that is “Trumpist,” as some short on words and ideas have been quick to gloss), force reality? No. You will have the opportunity to obtain incontrovertible factual data from the record, and not free-thinking thoughts, and then express your opinion accordingly.
The key concept is precisely the possibility of survival of the child outside the maternal womb. But “abortionists” refuse to accept simple evidence: that a human being is a human being from the moment of conception, just as a giraffe is a giraffe from the moment of conception. Never from the conception of a giraffe will a non-giraffe be born. There is nothing, neither on a logical nor on a physical level, that can accredit the passage from non-man to man inside the maternal womb in an arbitrary moment, or from non-giraffe to giraffe; in short, from “lump of cells” to fetus. Also because, if it were a mere “lump of cells”, it would always be human cells.
By repeating this nonsense, however, “abortionism” claims to be able to eliminate the living being inside a human womb before X moment when that being would (magically?) become just as human.
This is science talking
Today, however, when the discriminating criterion is the capacity of the human person to live outside the maternal womb, it becomes decisive to establish what is the X moment of the “possibility of survival”.
Apart from the fact that it is an aggravating and not an extenuating circumstance to kill (with twisted Darwinist logic), science becomes the deciding factor for those innocent and yet-born who need help to survive. And science, in this realm, is progressing every second… every minute. What you thought you knew 48 years ago at the time of the judgment of Roe v. Wade, or at the time of the Planned Parenthood v. Casey sentence 29 years ago is not what we learned in the years that have followed. The concept of viability outside of the womb is not the same today as it was yesterday or the day before. Let’s be clear: there is an objective and incontrovertible truth about the concept of viability, but man learns it by degrees according to scientific progress.
So the permissibility of abortion changes over time. In Mississippi today, it’s 15 weeks. But “abortionism” itself says that the “chance of survival” is not linked to a specific gestational age. It varies. This was said by pro-abortion Planned Parenthood gynecologist Colleen P. McNicholas before a U.S. federal body. So it makes no sense to set a rigid point of no return in terms of time. That depends.
At 15 weeks of age, the human person in their mother’s womb shows a beating heart, has a face, has eyelashes, teeth underneath the gum line, fingers and toes, brain waves, is capable of complex facial expressions and reacts to touch. There are babies born after 21 weeks of pregnancy that have survived. One of the reasons for the law passed in 2018 in Mississippi setting the deadline at 15 weeks is that most abortions that are performed beyond that deadline involve techniques that tear arms and legs from the torso of the baby still in the womb, before crushing its skull. Former abortion gynecologist Anthony Levatino explains this in a video that I recommend bypassing if your stomach isn’t the strongest. Another reason is that after the baby is 15 weeks old in their mother’s womb, the risks to the woman’s health and life increase.
Fear is 90
In taking on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the federal Supreme Court could be exposed to these new scientific developments that were not available in 1973. It could find that no one can set a time limit ad libitum because science has no elements to propose; ascertaining that the whole house of cards that has been claiming victims for 48 years could very well fall and finally overturn that killer ruling of 1973.
Indeed, in the U.S. federal legal system, legal precedents guide. But by virtue of the separation of federal powers, the legislative assembly (the federal Congress) is free to act independently. Roughly, but not erroneously, one could say that in the U.S. federal system the greatest power is that of the legislative assembly (House and Congress) followed, in order, by the judiciary and then the executive power (the U.S. presidency). Although the system of checks and balances inhibits any such formal hierarchy, in fact this description is correct.
Within this framework, the doctrine of stare decisis (“standing on what has been decided”), the general principle of common law systems, is the key to the logic of legal precedent. Federal Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, however, has already said he is in favor of reconsidering it in cases where it is necessary out of fidelity to the federal Constitution. For example, on decisive issues like abortion. And his colleagues Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch agree. At the crucial moment of the vote in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, when the time comes, the crucial votes could be those of Kavanaugh and Speaker John G. Roberts.
Well, the fear of the truth that the Supreme Court might uncover by investigating that case is so great that the Biden Administration is marching in lockstep. Hence, the “codifying” of Roe v. Wade.
White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki announced that the Biden Administration will make abortion law; whatever the federal Supreme Court’s verdict on the Mississippi case.
They’re scared.
And when they get scared, they get mean.