The Ugly, Unknown Story Behind Roe v. Wade

 

It’s not often that I agree with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but she was right for more reasons than she probably realized when she said last year that the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade went “too far, too fast.” Roe protected almost all abortions from the democratic process and led to four decades in which, by even the most conservative estimates, 50 million American babies were aborted and pulled from their mother’s womb.

And, now thanks to a revealing book out this week called Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wadeby veteran attorney Clarke D. Forsythe, we know that Roe was not just one of the most controversial decisions in the Supreme Court’s history, but also a poorly reasoned rush to judgment based on a wealth of misinformation that has since been debunked. The first to look inside the Supreme Court Justices’ papers, Forsythe shows the liberal supporters of the decision made at least three shockingly erroneous assumptions. 

Read more at Townhall >>

 

40th Annual March for Life

An estimated 650,000 marchers at this annual event, and the American media chooses to ignore it. This is precisely why you don't want to rely on the mainstream media for news.

Poll Finds Majority of Americans, and Nearly 6 in 10 Young Adults, Say Abortion 'Morally Wrong'

Photo from Lutherans for Life

On the 37th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion throughout the United States, a new survey shows a strong majority of Americans believe abortion to be "morally wrong."

"Millennials" (those 18-29) consider abortion to be "morally wrong" even more (58%) than Baby Boomers (those 45-64) (51%). Generation X (those 30-44) are similar to Millennials (60% see abortion as "morally wrong"). More than 6 in 10 of the Greatest Generation (those 65+) feel the same.

The most recent Knights of Columbus -- Marist survey -- conducted in late December and early January -- is the latest in a series of such surveys commissioned by the Knights of Columbus and conducted by Marist Institute for Public Opinion. In October of 2008 and July of 2009, the survey has been tracking an increasing trend toward the pro-life position -- a trend confirmed by Gallup and Pew surveys in mid-2009. K of C -- Marist surveys are available online at www.kofc.org/moralcompass.

"Americans of all ages -- and younger people in even greater numbers than their parents -- see abortion as something morally wrong," said Supreme Knight Carl Anderson. "America has turned a corner and is embracing life -- and in doing so is embracing a future they -- and all of us -- can be proud of."

He added: "Advances in technology show clearly -- and ever more clearly -- that an unborn child is completely a human being. That, coupled with the large number of Americans who know one of the many people who has been negatively affected by abortion are certainly two of the reasons that Americans are increasingly uncomfortable with Roe v. Wade's legacy of abortion, and with abortion generally. The majority of Americans now understand that abortion has consequences, and that those consequences are not good."

The question on abortion was part of a larger survey, which will be released in the next several days.

This report presents the findings from a survey of 2,243 Americans -- including an oversample of 1,006 Millennials. Reports for Americans have a margin of error of +/-2% and for Millennials it is +/-3%. Data were collected from December 23, 2009 through January 4, 2010 using an online, probability-based panel from Knowledge Networks, Inc.

Obama’s Science Czar Said a Born Baby ‘Will Ultimately Develop Into a Human Being’

Is Obama Science "Czar" John P. Holdren human yet?

From CNSNews.com
By Terence P. Jeffrey

President Obama’s top science adviser said in a book he co-authored in 1973 that a newborn child “will ultimately develop into a human being” if he or she is properly fed and socialized.

“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being,” John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in “Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions.”

Holdren co-authored the book with Stanford professors Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich. The book was published by W.H. Freeman and Company.

At the time “Human Ecology” was published, Holdren was a senior research fellow at the California Institute of Technology. Paul Ehrlich, currently president of The Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford, is also author of the 1968 bestseller, “The Population Bomb,” a book The Washington Post said “launched the popular movement for zero population growth.”

“Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions” argued that the human race faced dire consequences unless human population growth was stopped.

“Human values and institutions have set mankind on a collision course with the laws of nature,” wrote the Ehrlichs and Holdren. “Human beings cling jealously to their prerogative to reproduce as they please—and they please to make each new generation larger than the last—yet endless multiplication on a finite planet is impossible. Most humans aspire to greater material prosperity, but the number of people that can be supported on Earth if everyone is rich is even smaller than if everyone is poor.”

The specific passage expressing the authors’ view that a baby “will ultimately develop into a human being” is on page 235 in chapter 8 of the book, which is titled “Population Limitation.”

At the time the book was written, the Supreme Court had not yet issued its Roe v. Wade decision, and the passage in question was part of a subsection of the “Population Limitation” chapter that argued for legalized abortion.

Read the rest of this entry >>

"Roe" of Roe v. Wade Arrested for Protesting Hearing of Pro-Abortion Supreme Court Nominee

From LifeSiteNews
By Kathleen Gilbert

Norma McCorvey, the "Roe" of Roe v. Wade who now is a leading opponent of abortion, was arrested for disrupting the hearing of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor today along with several other pro-life protesters.

Sgt. Kimberly Schneider of the Capitol Police said McCorvey and one other protester were charged with unlawful conduct for disrupting Congress, making a total of four arrests related to abortion protests during the hearing, reports the Washington Post.

McCorvey had at first stayed outside the Hart Senate Office building with a small group of pro-life activists protesting Sotomayor's confirmation. She then gained admittance to the building as one among the crowd of citizens regularly admitted in brief intervals to listen in on the hearing.

"You're wrong Sotomayor, you're wrong about abortion," McCorvey declared to the Supreme Court hopeful before being quickly escorted out.

While Sotomayor has had little direct contact with the abortion debate, her pro-abortion beliefs have been established by interviews with senators on Capitol Hill in addition to a long list of extreme pro-abortion legal briefs authored under her purview.

The hearing was interrupted several times by other pro-life protesters. Shortly before the proceedings commenced, the Washington Times reports one man shouted: "What about the rights of the unborn?" A second protester, who repeatedly shouted "Abortion is murder," was escorted out by police about an hour later.

McCorvey, whose Supreme Court victory in 1973 unleashed legalized abortion in America, became an active opponent of the procedure following a conversion experience in 1994. Her 2005 petition to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade was rejected.

On the Anniversary of Roe v. Wade

Coming To America

In the past year there has been much discussion about how America needs illegal aliens because of a shortage of American workers. We have read that much of California’s harvest may rot because there are not enough workers to gather it in. There have also been news stories about the shortages of eligible young men and women to serve in our Armed Forces, and America’s aging “baby boomers” worry about whether there will be enough working Americans to pay for the Social Security benefits and Medicare that will be needed by the baby boom generation.

Nature abhors a vacuum, but so too, apparently, does the American economy. Increasingly, thoughtful Americans are considering that this shortage of workers is a direct result of the nearly 50 million lives that were terminated over a thirty year span through abortion.

Georgia’s former Senator, Zell Miller, asks “How could this great land of plenty produce too few people in the last 30 years? Here is the brutal truth that no one dares to mention: We’re too few because too many of our babies have been killed. If those 45 million children had lived, today they would be defending our country, they would be filling our jobs, and they would be paying into Social Security.”

Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries, is more blunt. He states: “The reason we must allow millions of illegal aliens in to fill these jobs is because we have murdered a generation that would otherwise be filling them … sacrificed since 1973 to the god of self-fulfillment.” Colson adds: “Remember the compassionate stuff that the abortionists used to tell us: ‘We are just preventing these poor kids from growing up in deprived, impoverished circumstances?’ Hah! False. What happens is that others come in from abroad to live in those deprived, difficult, and impoverished circumstances and at great public cost.”

Columnist Nathan Tabor points out that, according to the Centers for Disease Control, legalized abortions in America terminated the lives of about 11.9 million babies during 1973-1983. He states that “if those aborted children had lived and grown to adulthood, their median age today would be 30.5 years old.” With tragic and chilling irony, Tabor points to the corresponding number of working-age illegal immigrants now in America, crucial replacement workers in a sense.

Newsweek published a lengthy story about how the “birth dearth” throughout the world will have enormous geo-political consequences. It quotes a new book on the subject that “Never in the last 650 years, since the time of the Black Plague, have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long, in so many places.” It’s estimated that Germany could shed nearly a fifth of its population over the next 40 years, and some European countries are on such a downward trajectory, it may be impossible for them to ever recover.

There are disturbing exceptions to this phenomenon, however, and the United Nations projects that the Middle East will double in population from 326 million today, to 649 million by 2050. Saudi Arabia has one of the highest fertility rates in the world, along with other Muslim countries like Pakistan.

Human life should never be valued on the basis of what it can do for us or for what it provides for the society in which we live. Human life is sacred, because human life is wonderfully created by God in His own image. Perhaps we are beginning to see the price mankind is paying for rejecting the Author of Life, and for making decisions about which of our children shall live and which shall die.

Those “progressives” that imposed abortion on the United States told us that it would liberate women and free us from Judeo-Christian precepts that merely inhibit freedom, induce shame, and prevent us from enjoying life fully. How arrogant!

It will be a tragic twist of history if, in sacrificing unborn children for the sake of our personal expediency, we find that the price of that terrible slaughter of the innocents is both our freedom and our country.

The liberated new world sought by the progressives is coming into view, and they can rest assured that madrasahs and imams, here and abroad, also eagerly await their dream of a post-Christian world.

TV AD: ROMNEY'S LIBERAL RECORD IN MASSACHUSETTS

A new 527 group called RoeGone.org -- the conservative answer to MoveOn.org -- has produced a 60-second web ad responding to Governor Mitt Romney's challenge to look to his record as governor as an indication of where he stands on the issues.

TV AD -- Romney: "Look at my record as governor"

"The governor challenged voters to look at his record. RoeGone.org has done just that," said spokesperson Sharon Blakeney, a lawyer in Boerne, Texas.

Blakeney said the group is raising money to place the ad on cable television in Super Tuesday states later this week. The group also plans to produce ads addressing other politicians' stand on similar issues, she said.

RoeGone.org is a pro-life organization committed to the appointment of judges who will support overturning Roe v. Wade. For more information contact contact Sharon Blakeney 830-816-2222

Full script of ad:

In the Florida debate, Governor Mitt Romney said:

"I can point to a very simple way to find out exactly where I stand, and that is look at my record as governor."

Really?

As governor, Mitt Romney issued an executive order forcing justices of the peace to perform homosexual weddings, or resign. Then he ordered marriage licenses changed to read “party A” and “party B” -- instead of “husband” and “wife.”

As governor, Romney appointed a board member of the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association to the bench, and appointed more Democrat judges than Republicans.

As governor, Romney authored and signed a mandatory heath insurance plan backed by Ted Kennedy -- including taxpayer-funded abortion on demand.

As governor, Romney overruled his own health department and forced Catholic hospitals to distribute the morning after abortion pill.

Homosexual marriage?
Tax-funded abortions?
Catholic hospital morning after pills?
Homosexual activist judges?

"Look at my record as governor."

Huckabee: Abortion Not States' Call

By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee rejects letting states decide whether to allow abortions, claiming the right to life is a moral issue not subject to multiple interpretations.

"It's the logic of the Civil War," Huckabee said Sunday, comparing abortion rights to slavery. "If morality is the point here, and if it's right or wrong, not just a political question, then you can't have 50 different versions of what's right and what's wrong."

"For those of us for whom this is a moral question, you can't simply have 50 different versions of what's right," he said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday."

The former Arkansas governor, who has drawn within striking distance of Mitt Romney in Iowa's leadoff presidential caucuses, said he was taken aback by the National Right to Life Committee's recent endorsement of Fred Thompson, the ex-Tennessee senator.

"But my surprise was nothing compared to the surprise of people across America who had been faithful supporters of right to life," said Huckabee, who is challenging Thompson's claim that he is the most reliable conservative in the GOP field.

"Fred's never had a 100 percent record on right to life in his Senate career. The records reflect that. And he doesn't support the human life amendment which is most amazing because that's been a part of the Republican platform since 1980," Huckabee said.

Pro-Life Advocates Can't Support Rudy Giuliani Over Abortion Despite Op-Ed

by Dave Andrusko

Sometimes (more often than I care to admit), something has to be seen to be believed. You actually must read/see something with your own two eyes to figure out how in the world anyone could possibly believe what was just said.

Enter "Anti-Roe and Pro-Rudy," a mind-bending op-ed that runs in today's New York Times. The author, Eric Johnston, says he is a "fervent pro-lifer," and since we don't know him, we take him at his word.

Johnston supports pro-abortion Rudy Giuliani: "I think Mr. Giuliani will be the most effective advocate for the pro-life cause precisely because he is unreligious and a supporter of abortion rights."

Well, that's the kind of statement that'll get your attention. Let's see how Johnston attempts to square the circle.

To understand his approach, it helps to recall the now familiar "Nixon goes to China'" historical reference. Johnston doesn't use the parallel and no doubt would reject it, but as you remember the idea was that only Nixon, a fervent anti-communist, could have gone to Communist China to begin the normalization of Sino-American relations.

Likewise, only Giuliani, who has a long track record of support for abortion, can "shake up the nearly 35-year-old debate over Roe v. Wade," according to Johnston.

Note that Johnston begins with an argument Giuliani supporters often make to soften the resistance of people who would otherwise not even consider the former Mayor of New York City. And that is that even though the Republican party is against abortion, Giuliani has been ahead in the GOP presidential polls for months.

Understand what Johnston is doing: combining an "is" --Giuliani is leading in the polls--with an "ought"--pro-lifers should get behind him because Giuliani can best shake up the "status quo" on the abortion debate.

We talked about the poll numbers on Monday.

To recapitulate: (1) according to Gallup, among those Republican voters who are aware of the broader field of GOP presidential candidates, former Senator Fred Thompson leads Giuliani, 33% to 25%. (2) According to the Rasmussen Report, among the pool of people who will choose the GOP presidential nominee--likely Republican primary voters--Thompson garners 27% and Giuliani 19%.

All this could change again and again, but there is no inevitability to a Giuliani win. His numbers have been dropping.

Johnston leavens this with what might be called the bogeyman argument. Any candidate who sounds too serious about reversing Roe will spook the voters, especially if they are "deeply religious."

Giuliani is just the man, according to Johnston, to overcome this. Giuliani is (in Johnston's overly generous assessment) personally "ambivalent" about abortion but says he will appoint "strict constructionist judges (judges who will not use the courts "to achieve political ends")--and "ducks questions about his personal faith."

And because he is a "constitutionalist who supports abortion rights," Johnston writes, Giuliani "can create an anti-Roe majority by explaining that the end of Roe means letting the people decide, state by state, about abortion."

But precisely why is Giuliani "more persuasive" about this federalism argument than the other GOP presidential candidates? "[B]ecause he will not be perceived as trying to advance his own religious preferences," Johnston argues. "By taking the side of pro-lifers for democratic, but not devout, motives, a President Giuliani could shake up the nearly 35-year-old debate over Roe v. Wade."

It is both insulting and flat-out wrong to suggest that the candidates running for the GOP presidential nomination who oppose abortion are raising (or will eventually raise) the hackles of mainstream America. Whatever their personal faith, they convey their opposition to abortion in language accessible to people of all faiths or no faith.

They have made it clear in a variety of forums that the reversal of Roe is their ultimate objective; that this much-to-be-desired turn of events is not around the corner; that in the interim they are working to hedge in the "right" to abortion; and that when Roe is in ruins, the debate over abortion will return primarily to the legislative bodies.

The "strict constructionist" label is intended to convince skeptics that all the expressly and exuberantly pro-abortion statements Giuliani has made in the past are to count for nothing. That list goes on and on.

To cite just one, speaking at the NARAL's "Champions of Choice" luncheon in Manhattan in 2001, Giuliani said, "As a Republican who supports a woman's right to choose, it is particularly an honor to be here." He added, "The government shouldn't dictate that choice by making it a crime or making it illegal."

But, equally important, every time Giuliani talks about appointing "strict constructionists," inquiring minds think back to his judicial appointments while Mayor. A few months ago, the newspaper, Politico, for example, did a review of "the 75 judges Giuliani appointed to three of New York state's lower courts."

The newspaper first quoted what he told South Carolina Republicans in February: "I would want judges who are strict constructionists because I am," adding, "Those are the kinds of justices I would appoint -- Scalia, Alito and Roberts."

But Politico's analysis found that "[M]ost of Giuliani's judicial appointments during his eight years as mayor of New York were hardly in the model of Chief Justice John Roberts or Samuel Alito -- much less aggressive conservatives in the mold of Antonin Scalia."

For our purposes, no less a source than Kelli Conlin, the head of NARAL Pro-Choice New York, said of Giuliani's appointments, "They were decent, moderate people."

(Johnston also argues that "Mr. Giuliani pledges his support for the Hyde Amendment," which may be true this minute, but hasn't been the case in the past and may well not be in the future.)

We've heard a ton of arguments why pro-lifers should make their peace with Giuliani. Most of them center around the likelihood of his winning the nomination. As we have seen, that rationalization is wearing thin.

Eric Johnston's complementary argument--that Giuliani would actually advance the cause quicker and more effectively--is both bizarre and unpersuasive.

I'm sure you won't be fooled, even for a second.

Giuliani with Governor Whitman: Two liberal, pro-abortion, "Rockefeller Republicans".

Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics.

Published by: http://www.lifenews.com/nat3331.html