(Pictured) These folks, along with some others (including a nice woman named Peggy) were out supporting unborn children and poor manipulated women. This was part of the National Pro-Life Bridges Day event (although these folks may have been pre-gaming it, I can't remember.)
Worst Supreme Court Decision...
Historically, The worst supreme court decision goes to the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, from 1857. Universally vilified (except in the slave states, that is) this decision was so encompassing that it almost singlehandedly set the United States on a course towards civil war. It was a decision that not only denied black slaves any legal means to throw off their chains and claim citizenship, but it cast out the Missouri Compromise and began to leak the infection of slavery from where it had been sealed. After this decision, black abolitionist Frederick Douglass said,
...no thanks to the slaveholding wing of the Supreme Court, my hopes were never brighter than now. I have no fear that the National Conscience will be put to sleep by such an open, glaring, and scandalous tissue of lies as that decision is, and has been, over and over, shown to be.He had earlier talked about the Supreme Court's attempt to settle the debate of slavery in the National Conscience, and indeed, even president Buchanan influenced the court for political purposes, to settle the question once and for all. Except that, of course, it did not. Douglass understood that the rulings of seven old men in robes couldn't turn the tide of the National Conscience that was continually waking, nor could it alter the will of God Almighty, to see men set free. He continued,
The Supreme Court of the United States is not the only power in this world. It is very great, but the Supreme Court of the Almighty is greater. [The Chief Justice] can do many things, but he cannot perform impossibilities. ... He may decide, and decide again; but he cannot reverse the decision of the Most High [emphasis added]. He cannot change the essential nature of things — making evil good, and good evil. Happily for the whole human family, their rights have been defined, declared, and decided in a court higher than the Supreme Court.
They cannot change the essential nature of things, but my, how they try.
...Continuing Trend?
The current Supreme Court continues to make bad decision after bad decision, and after every bad decision, declares that precedent precludes them from diverging from those bad decisions. June Medical Services L.L.C. v. Russo is one of the latest in a long line of bad decisions. As with a previous case from Texas, the issue revolves around requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges to a nearby hospital. The Court decided 5-4 that this Louisiana law was an undue burden on a woman's right to get an abortion. Of course, we've been dealing with the fallout of Roe v. Wade for decades now, so this relatively minor set back serves as a reminder of just how much legal ground we've lost even while our cultural influence has steadily grown. No, this minor skirmish on the legal front lines in the defense of the unborn is not what makes this decision so disappointing; rather the conservative and pro-life movement is disappointed (and disillusioned) with the hope of judicial redemption from so-called institutionalist Chief Justice Roberts, or pseudo-textualist Gorsuch. The former is so concerned with preserving the "reputation" of the court that he does nothing but destroy that reputation. The Cato Institute put it this way, "Ultimately, it’s when justices think about legitimacy that they act most illegitimately." And the latter is so myopic that his opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia was entirely spent redefining the word "sex". Again, Roberts joins this terrible decision. With judges like these, we are guaranteed to not overturn Roe, and are even likely to learn that abortion is an international demand.
We Mustn't Lose Hope
The fact that we cannot rely on the supreme court of our constitution and land to uphold the life and liberty of the unborn should not put us in a state of depression, but rather, it should give us hope. When our political leaders and judges fail to live up to the Declaration of Independence and capture freedom for every human being and they make evil decisions to allow mothers and doctors to kill their unborn children, and they declare that those in the womb have no right to citizenship, but the criminals, rapists, and murderers ought not hang, ... we know that there is an Ultimate court of justice. And God has given us opportunity to live up to the ideals we declared for life and liberty and happiness, that we may secure our land for the general welfare of ourselves and our posterity. We have the power to change our government, to explicitly declare the rights of the unborn as an amendment to our founding document, just as we declared it for all races, although it already implied it was for all people when it declared "We the People." We have the right to petition our government to change the law, to demand that our justices pass the first and most important litmus test, "Will you rule abortion as unconstitutional?" and if they will not answer or answer negatively, then our senators must vote no. If they vote yes, we must put others in their place. We must push, and push, and push until abortion is in the sea. Frederick Douglass knew the spirit of the Constitution and its words (not its failed administration or warped interpretation) were for life and liberty, not for death and slavery. He said of the desperate search of the Constitution in defense of slavery,
I ask, then, any man to read the Constitution, and tell me where, if he can, in what particular that instrument affords the slightest sanction of slavery? Where will he find a guarantee for slavery? Will he find it in the declaration that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law? Will he find it in the declaration that the Constitution was established to secure the blessing of liberty? Will he find it in the right of the people to be secure in their persons and papers, and houses, and effects? Will he find it in the clause prohibiting the enactment by any State of a bill of attainder?
And the same can be said of abortion. Where in our venerable document can it be shown that life may be taken from any of the People without due process of law? And where in the law is mere existence to be punished by death, or where is it that to secure the blessings of liberty, one must be allowed to kill a fellow human being for the sake of convenience? A plain reading of the thing will speak only in opposition to abortion. Frederick continues,
How is the constitutionality of slavery made out, or attempted to be made out? First, by discrediting and casting away as worthless the most beneficent rules of legal interpretation; by disregarding the plain and common sense reading of the instrument itself; by showing that the Constitution does not mean what it says, and says what it does not mean, by assuming that the written Constitution is to be interpreted in the light of a secret and unwritten understanding of its framers, which understanding is declared to be in favor of slavery. It is in this mean, contemptible, underhand method that the Constitution is pressed into the service of slavery.
There are justices on the Court today that cannot even interpret the plain language of the law passed sixty years ago, let alone interpret the Constitution according to the meaning of the words as written.
The Woe of Roe
And nearly fifty years ago, the Court persisted in declaring that the Constitution does not mean what it says when it says no person shall be deprived of life without due process, that no child should be punished for the mistakes of the mother (bills of attainder).
The majority writes in Roe,
It is thus apparent that at common law, at the time of the adoption of our Constitution, and throughout the major portion of the 19th century, abortion was viewed with less disfavor than under most American statutes currently in effect.And yet our forefathers wrote the Constitution for life and liberty, for ourselves, and our posterity. The very words of the document screams against abortion, and the majority opinion attempted to justify abortion by claiming that common law, at the time of the adoption of our Constitution, wasn't too much against abortion. Note how this has nothing to do with the Constitution itself. Another justice in another case wrote regarding another "lesser" life,
They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it. This opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race. It was regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, which no one thought of disputing, or supposed to be open to dispute; and men in every grade and position in society daily and habitually acted upon it in their private pursuits, as well as in matters of public concern, without doubting for a moment the correctness of this opinion.
If indeed we are to take the common feeling of the day as justification for evil, you have here an excellent mouthpiece. The Roe opinion later states,
This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved. All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation.
For whatever burden a child brings to the life of a mother, abortion truly is extracting "the pound of flesh," and the spilling of a great amount of blood. Douglass writes on the purposes of law,
[Rules for interpreting the law in harmony with the true idea and object of law and liberty] [t]hey rise out of the very elements of law. It is to protect human rights, and promote human welfare. Law is in its nature opposed to wrong, and must everywhere be presumed to be in favor of the right. The pound of flesh, but not one drop of blood, is a sound rule of legal interpretation. Besides there is another rule of law as well of common sense, which requires us to look to the ends for which a law is made, and to construe its details in harmony with the ends sought.
What you will notice is a complete lack of concern for the psychological well-being of women who've committed abortion and have become depressed and suicidal. You'll notice too, a lip-service concern for "all concerned, associated with the unwanted child" when concern for the child himself is completely absent. Were all the couples unable to conceive looking to adopt a child asked whether this child might be unwanted? Of course, this is a hypothetical child - a truly hypothetical child, which we have only conceived in our minds. But these judges (and the plaintiffs) would have you believe that the child in a woman's womb is also hypothetical. The words "potential" or "potentiality" with regards to life in the womb appear at least ten times throughout the opinion. In fact, the judges in Roe state,
In short, the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.
In fact, our other "mystery" justice had a similar opinion,
The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.
Conscience Prevailed
The mystery judge is of course Chief Justice Taney, who gave the horrid opinion in Dred Scott. All of civilized society now recognizes just how contemptible this judgement was, and yet it was the law of the land. It would take war to truly answer the question of slavery in the United States, and over 600,000 souls died in the struggle. But the continual march of the Church, across the world and specifically in the United States, changed the public discussion and put abolition at the forefront of American politics. We must remember that the national conscience is not yet seared and we may yet win the young men and women to Christ and to life. The success of the pro-life movement is in changing hearts and minds by showing people the truth, that the child within the womb is not merely potential life but human life, full stop. There are more casualties from abortion in the United States alone than there was in direct deaths caused by World War II. That's over sixty million (60,000,000) aborted children. It's unconscionable, it's evil, and at this present low ebb, we have hope - hope in God to give the unborn the voice they need, to change the hearts of men, and the rising tide will come swiftly. The only question that remains is whether or not that tide will wash over our hearts and minds to cleanse us from our national sin, or will it rise into a tidal wave of destruction, breaking the levies of another civil war? I continue to have hope that the nation will be filled with the spirit of 1776,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
God bless you and yours on this blessed 4th of July weekend.
-gcm