The Abortion Debate Should Focus on Abortion, Not Politics or Scare Tactics
By Shawn Carney | December 10, 2021 | 3:18pm EST
While the Supreme Court hearing on Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization has reignited the abortion debate, the real discussion we should be having is not around politics, but rather abortion itself and whether a free country should have a right to it.
The divide has strengthened every year since abortion was legalized in 1973. Arguments get louder and lies become more far-fetched.
In early December, during an interview with MSNBC, Brittany Packnett Cunningham, an activist and regular MSNBC commentator made claims that the pro-life movement is rooted in preserving segregation and supporting a white supremacist religious right. Her argument centered on the idea that the pro-life movement is not founded around issues of life but instead on coalescing and holding power. Where is abortion, reproductive rights, privacy, healthcare, or choice in this?
No progress is made, on any issue, when one side simply calls the other a white supremacist. It’s washed-up, off-topic, and unproductive. It’s also disingenuous and a disservice to the many Americans who have moral beliefs about abortion and who realize Roe is built upon 1973 science which has changed due to technological advances.
Cunningham’s remark on MSNBC is not the only outlandish statement we have heard recently, nor is it likely to be the last. Pro-abortion activists have long utilized catchy, incendiary remarks in order to disguise false or misleading information. MSNBC opinion columnist Dean Obeidallah compared the GOP’s record on women’s rights to that of the Taliban. This is a new fad. After Texas passed the Heartbeat Act, I was personally called a member of the Taliban by a reporter solely because I am a pro-life male in Texas.
The obsession for one side to quickly jump off the critical issue at hand is why the pro-life movement is winning in this debate – by staying on point. One side will discuss the issue and the other won’t. One side embraces science and recognizes the laws that currently protect unborn children (ask Scott Peterson, convicted of murdering his pregnant wife). One side is also growing, even with former abortion workers and women who have had an abortions, some leading the March for Life every year.
With that said, Cunningham was right that political power-grabbing did have something to do with the deep and often sharp historical division between the pro-abortion and pro-life positions.
In the current climate, there is an unwavering divide between Democratic and Republican stances on abortion; however, this has not always been the case. Surprisingly, positions on the topic have gone back and forth and historically have not been strictly defined. Neither party had a firm position until the 1976 election, when stances on abortion became a split issue, leading to the harsh polarization we see today.
In the 1980 election, the Democratic Party hitched its wagon to the abortion industry, paving the path for the association it has today. Since then we’ve seen the continual expansion of the liberal platform to include direct taxpayer funding, repeal of all federal and state abortion restrictions, and a push to make abortion as accessible and affordable as possible. The 1980s saw the Republicans adopt the pro-life language, which initially was supposed to be temporary but shortly catalyzed into an alliance with conservative evangelicals, merging religion and politics.
50-plus years of legislative, judicial, and grassroots abortion battles have only made the debate more relevant. Political ideologies and platforms change based on the cultural winds, but the issue of life transcends political priorities and movements. Recognizing or denying humanity to a segment of our population reveals who we are or are not as a nation. It deserves the seriousness from both sides and refusing to discuss it openly by name-calling disrespects what is at stake for both sides of the abortion debate.
Conversations about abortion are often avoided with family, with co-workers, or even by pastors. Why is it that we are as uncomfortable with abortion now than ever before and we’ve had it for nearly five decades? What other SCOTUS decision is still debated every election cycle or judicial nomination? This is one of the most common surgeries in our land and we haven’t gotten over it.
There were many moments during the oral arguments of the Dobbs case where the actual topic of abortion was even avoided or ignored. The awkwardness of the abortion debate, of pinning mother against child, life against rights, science against our will, is why Sandra Day O’Connor said that Roe was "on a collision course with itself" and why the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued it was bad law. We need to acknowledge that if talking about abortion is tempting to avoid within families and even in the highest court of our land, we should at least enter the conversations with respect for what’s at stake. Everyone would benefit if the abortion debate solely focused on abortion.
Shawn Carney is the CEO and president of the pro-life organization, 40 Days for Life. He is also the best-selling author of “The Beginning of the End of Abortion” and “What to Say When: The Complete New Guide to Discussing Abortion.” To learn more about 40 Days, visit www.40daysforlife.com.
Chief Justice Roberts Calls Texas Ban on Aborting Babies With a Beating Heart an ‘Unconstitutional Law’
(CNSNews.com) - Chief Justice John Roberts said in an opinion published today--that concurred in part and dissented in part from the opinion of the court--that a Texas law that bans the abortion of unborn babies who have a detectable heartbeat is an “unconstitutional law.”
He also said that the threat posed by the civil suits the law authorizes “chills constitutionally protected conduct.”
"Texas has employed an array of strategems designed to shield its unconstitutional law from judicial review," Roberts wrote.
"These provisions, among others, effectively chill the provision of abortions in Texas," Roberts said.
"But by design," Roberts wrote, "the mere threat of even unsuccessful suits brought under S.B. 8 chills constitutionally protected conduct, given the peculiar rules the States has imposed."
The opinion of the court issued today in the case of Whole Women’s Health vs. Jackson did not address the fundamental question of whether it is constitutional for states to ban the abortion of unborn babies who have a heartbeat (which begins at about six weeks into gestation) but which Texas government officials an abortion provider can sue over the law.
The Texas law—S.B.8--is unusual in that it does not empower Texas government officials to take punitive action against an abortionist, but instead gives private citizens the authority to bring civil suits against abortionists or, as Roberts summarizes it "anyone who 'aids or abets,' or intends to aid or abet, an abortion performed after roughly six weeks."
In writing the opinion of the court, Justice Neil Gorsuch made clear that the case was not about whether the Texas law itself was constitutional.
“In this preliminary posture, the ultimate merits question—whether S.B. 8 is consistent with the Federal Constitution—is not before this Court,” wrote Gorsuch. “Nor is the wisdom of S.B. 8 as a matter of public policy.”
The court ruled that the abortion provider bringing suit against the Texas law cannot sue Texas state-court judges, Texas state-court clerks, the Texas attorney general or a private citizen who did not intend to bring suit against the abortion provider.
However, the court ruled that the abortion provider could sue the executive directors of the Texas Medical Board, the Texas Board of Nursing, the Texas Board of Pharmacy, and the executive commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. “Each of these individuals is an executive licensing official who may or must take enforcement actions against the petitioners if they violate the terms of Texas’s Health and Safety Code, including S.B. 8,” Gorsuch wrote in the opinion of the court. “Accordingly, we hold that sovereign immunity does not bar the petitioners’ suit against these named defendants at the motion to dismiss stage.”
Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed with this part of the court’s opinion.
“Justice Thomas alone reaches a different conclusion,” Gorsuch said in the opinion of the court.
“Justice Thomas suggests that the licensing-official defendants lack authority to enforce S.B. 8 because the statute says it is to be ‘exclusively’ enforced through private civil actions ‘[n]notwithstanding…any other law.’”
In the concluding paragraph of his own opinion, Thomas stated: “I would instruct the District Court to dismiss this case against all respondents, including the four licensing officials, because petitioners may not avail themselves of the exception in Ex Parte Young. I join the Court’s opinion in all other aspects and respectfully dissent only from Part II-C.”
Chief Justice Roberts, as noted in the syllabus for the case, “filed an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part.” Roberts was joined in his opinion by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.
“Texas has passed a law banning abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy,” Robert wrote in his opinion. “That law is contrary to this Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). It has had the effect of denying the exercise of what we have held is a right protected under the Federal Constitution.
“Texas,” Roberts continued, “has employed an array of stratagems designed to shield its unconstitutional law from judicial review.”
Roberts goes on to refer to aborting a baby with a beating heart as “constitutionally protected conduct.”
“But by design, the mere threat of even unsuccessful suits brought under S.B. 8 chills constitutionally protected conduct, given the peculiar rule the state has imposed,” wrote Roberts. “Under these circumstances, the court clerks who issue citations and docket S.B. 8 cases are unavoidably enlisted in the scheme to enforce S.B. 8’s unconstitutional provisions, and thus are sufficiently ‘connect[ed]’ to such enforcement to be proper defendants.”
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