After 41 Years . . . Supreme Court’s Abortion Mandate Still Not Viable
By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — After 41 long years, the U.S. Supreme Court should see that its pro-abortion miscarriage of January 22, 1973, still has no viability.
Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs. Bolton still are under continued conscientious attack, but the court somehow hopes if it can keep delaying the inevitable, someday everyone will just settle down and accept its lawless, unconstitutional usurpation mandating nationwide permissive abortion.
The latest instance of unreality was on January 13, when the High Court declined to review a decision by the liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals against a 2012 Arizona law restricting abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The law acknowledged the ability of older preborn babies to feel pain and the greater dangers to women undergoing late abortion.
Phoenix’s KFYI radio (550 AM) ran a news item January 13 reporting an attorney saying that as medical advances continue to lower the age of viability, the High Court will have to address the issue of babies being able to survive earlier.
The Washington Post story posted on January 13 about the latest action referred to abortion standards “established by the justices 40 years ago in Roe v. Wade.”
Because of technological advances, that long ago in medicine might as well be 600 years ago. Forty years ago, even the highest judges hadn’t been able to see the ultrasound images of preborn babies playing in the womb that everyone in the 21st century is familiar with.
The High Court in 1973 might as well have ruled upon the medical right of witch doctors to brandish a certain kind of magical herb to drive away vampires, with the justices insisting such a legal ruling could never, ever be reversed.
The chief attorney for Phoenix’s Maricopa County, Bill Montgomery, had successfully argued for the Arizona law before U.S. District Judge James Teilborg, but lost on appeal before the Ninth Circuit.
Teilborg held that the Arizona legislature had cited “substantial and well-documented evidence that an unborn child has the capacity to feel pain during an abortion by at least 20 weeks gestational age.”
Montgomery issued the following statement on January 13: “Death be not proud. While the announcement of the United States Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari in Horne v. Isaacson permits, at least for the immediate future, abortion for any reason at 20 weeks of development, proponents should not cheer.
“The increasing body of medical evidence that babies at 20 weeks are capable of feeling every rip and tear as they are severed from a mother’s womb and that women face an exponentially greater risk of death at 20 weeks erases the facade that abortion only deals with ‘tissue’ and is safer than delivery,” he said.
“. . . [S]afeguarding the health and welfare of mothers and defending the dignity of life at all stages is a just cause and a duty of government. Today’s decision does not relieve government of that duty.”
LifeNews.com reported on January 14: “The ruling does not affect similar laws passed in other states except the law in Idaho, which is also covered under the jurisdiction of the appeals court.”
A media release from the national pro-life organization Americans United for Life (AUL) said, “A woman seeking an abortion at 20 weeks (five months) is 35 times more likely to die from abortion than she was in the first trimester. At 21 weeks or more, she is 91 times more likely to die from abortion than she was in the first trimester.”
The release quoted AUL’s president, Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D.: “It’s been seven years since the justices heard an abortion case, and the court has only heard three abortion cases since 1992. The court made itself a sort of national abortion-control board more than 40 years ago when it ruled in Roe v. Wade, and controls, with the lower federal courts, every aspect of every abortion law in every state.
“But given the growing body of medical evidence on how abortion harms women and causes pain to unborn children,” Yoest continued, “it’s time for the Supreme Court to return abortion to the legislators and voters across the country so that commonsense limits can be placed on such a dangerous procedure.”
Arizona Republican State Sen. Kimberly Yee, who successfully sponsored the bill in the legislature, said in a statement: “I sponsored the Mother’s Health and Safety Act because there is overwhelming evidence that abortion after 20 weeks puts women in harm’s way. What’s more, by this age, preborn children can feel pain, and it is simply inhumane to subject them to an abortion.
“Because the High Court decided not to take up this case, they allowed for a dangerous and radical decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to stand that overturned this law,” Yee said. “It is a fundamental responsibility of government to protect life. Today, we’ve fallen short of fulfilling our duty. There is no doubt, however, that today’s announcement will not be the last word on this critical issue.”
Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin, a Republican, issued a heartfelt statement on January 13 saying: “I am very much saddened and grief-stricken that the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the lawsuit over Arizona’s law. . . . Consequently, late-term abortions will continue to be performed in Arizona. The evidence in the Isaacson v. Horne case is compelling, and warranted a review by the court. My colleagues and I are convinced that abortions performed after 20 weeks are dangerous to women.
“More than 13,000 abortions were performed in Arizona in 2012. Over a thousand of these procedures occurred after 20 weeks, a time at which a growing number in the scientific community believe that a fetus can feel pain,” Tobin continued.
“Moreover, the ‘viability standard’ relied on in Roe vs. Wade is becoming more and more arbitrary and irrelevant as scientific research reveals ways to sustain the fetus during the second trimester of a pregnancy outside the womb. I hope the Supreme Court will one day soon take up the serious issues presented by this case,” he said.
