Saturday 27th April 2024

Home » Frontpage » Currently Reading:

As December Begins . . . High Court Ponders If Long Abortion Journey Too Burdensome

December 5, 2021 Frontpage No Comments

By DEXTER DUGGAN

On the first day of December 2021, the month that commemorates the birth of a Christmas Child, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments about results of the permissive abortion that it suddenly thrust on the nation nearly 49 full years ago, shortly after Christmas, in the new year of January 1973.
Enough years to amount to a lifetime for some. Or the ending of tens of millions of preborn babies’ lifetimes. None of the justices in 1973, middle-aged or elderly, is still alive.
Had carrying the burden of pro-abortion extremism for nearly a full half-century begun to exhaust the Court so much that it would no longer consent to responsibility for such a load?
Chief Justice John Roberts questioned U.S. abortion law going so much further than most other countries’, placing this nation at the level of Communist China and North Korea, LifeNews.com posted on December 1. In the past, Roberts hasn’t regarded U.S. permissive abortion as unfavorably as has, say, Justice Clarence Thomas.
The top story on page one of the December 2 New York Times was headlined, “Justices Indicate They Will Uphold Curb on Abortion — Mississippi’s ban after 15 weeks poses a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.”
Actually, the justices had issued no such declaration, but the pro-abortion Times apparently was worried enough by what was said that it made this concession.
Roberts also wondered if 15 weeks wasn’t time enough to make the abortion decision, and he noted that 15 weeks isn’t much earlier than “viability” as currently recognized medically.
Politico posted on December 1: “Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett . . . were even less sympathetic to arguments against Mississippi’s law. Barrett repeatedly suggested that the option of giving a baby up for adoption obviated the need for abortion, while Kavanaugh cast overturning of Roe and allowing states to enact bans as they see fit as courts ‘returning to neutrality’ on the question of abortion rights.”
LifeNews.com posted an interview at The Daily Signal with Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Erin Hawley about the case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, during which she said:
“So, Mississippi restricts abortions . . . after 15 weeks; it has robust exceptions for the health and life of the mother. It allows months for women to get an abortion. It is consistent with over 90 percent of the abortion laws nationwide.”
As has been the case for decades, the basics of abortion law ended up on the High Court’s doorstep. It was not always so.
A half-century ago, the infant pro-life movement in individual states had begun defeating the elitist pro-abortion cause that suddenly emerged like a tarantula from its hole and began to victimize a nation caught unaware. Abortion had not yet been federalized.
Think of that passage of time. A 50-year-old pro-lifer from then would be 99 now. A 50-year-old pro-lifer now was just being born.
In 1972, even the New York state legislature, stung by a grievous error it made in 1970, repealed the permissive abortion law it had enacted. However, pro-abortion liberal Republican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller vetoed the repeal.
Also in 1972, the power of energized information and popular sentiment resulted in overwhelming rejection by public vote in November of pro-abortion referenda in Michigan and North Dakota.
However, before pro-lifers could continue building on such successes to affirm traditional protection of the innocent, the Supreme Court jumped in desperately two months later, on January 22, to announce an amazing basic constitutional right previously undiscovered throughout U.S. history to perform abortion nationwide.
This was one of the earlier instances of the High Court’s predilection to be an activist liberal super-legislature furthering what it considered to be socially or culturally necessary, not the work of a neutral judiciary. This generated the response of “social conservatism.”
Although often touted as a “women’s rights” ruling, it actually was framed as conferring the abortion right on doctors supposedly exercising their professional judgment. The 1973 opinions decided by 7-2, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, were written by Justice Harry Blackmun, who once served as counsel for Minnesota’s renowned Mayo Clinic.
Blackmun made the grave error of viewing potential abortionists as the kind of upstanding medical professionals he associated with, hardly the actual profile of someone whose focus would be to end defenseless preborn babies’ lives as often as possible.
It was as if Blackmun had written an authorization to apply the death penalty by professional executioners who viewed tens of millions of their already born, innocent fellow citizens as deserving extermination. Whatever Blackmun had thought he was doing, he was dead wrong.
Radical abortion pioneer Bernard Nathanson, MD, was thrilled by Blackmun’s decision but came to realize how wrong this was. Nathanson later became a pro-lifer and then an actual practicing Catholic (as distinct from today’s brand of fanatical pro-abortion phony Catholic like left-wing Democrats Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi).
Eventually succumbing to cancer in 2011 in New York City, Nathanson even pleaded for babies’ lives from his deathbed. Blackmun, on the other hand, never apologized for his deadly error, even though permissive abortions soared into the millions and any illusion Blackmun may have had that he resolved this social dilemma was destroyed.
On January 4, 2016, as that year’s anniversary of Roe and Doe soon was to arrive, the Time magazine website posted a brief portion of historian Daniel K. Williams’ new book, Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement Before Roe v. Wade (Oxford University Press). Time headlined this, “What You Don’t Know About the Abortion Fight Before Roe v. Wade.”
Williams noted the media depiction of the pro-life movement being a Catholic cause, “but by 1972, that stereotype was already outdated.” What “had looked like a last-gasp battle against the forces of progress” was transformed when pro-lifers “changed their strategies, and figured out how to win legislative battles. In 1971, 25 states considered abortion legalization bills. Every one of them failed to pass,” Williams wrote.

Led Astray

The energy and enterprise were on the pro-life side, then the High Court’s extremist activists parachuted in to abort everything. Although not as extreme as today, dominant media even then were pro-abortion, and were led further and further astray by the fanatical New York Times.
Pro-life activities weren’t worth publicizing. Deep, cogent criticisms of Roe and Doe were ignored. The fight was over, media megaphones declared, even as the Times did its lying best to make the nation think Roe was some sort of mild, reasonable, popular measure.
Now, as 2021 winds toward a close, pro-abortionists were left to sputter on December 1 that no matter how wrong a Supreme Court decision may be, it still must prevail unless some major change has occurred.
Well, how about the major change of advancing medical science? None of 1973’s justices ever saw a preborn baby clearly dancing about on a sonogram, and the Court that year pretended to tell us when the Constitution set the age of “viability,” which was about as sensible as saying the Constitution disclosed the maximum speed at which a rocket could fly.
As December began, strongly pro-abortion Justice Sonia Sotomayor — another of those bad Catholics whose careers got ahead courtesy of pro-abortion fanatics like Democrat Barack Obama, who named her to the High Court — was aware of preborn babies moving around in the womb. But Sotomayor ghoulishly likened this to jerking by a brain-dead body.
The abortion warriors never seem to miss a chance to cheapen themselves.
Sotomayor also made the incredible suggestion that if the Court stopped behaving as the nation’s abortion dictators, this would be a terrible stain on its reputation — as if the Court hadn’t revealed itself as a thoroughly political body since 1973, inventing and negating laws to suit a highly ideological agenda.
Politico quoted Sotomayor: “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts? I don’t see how it is possible. If people actually believe that it’s all political, how will we survive? How will the Court survive?”
Washington attorney Megan Wold posted at Real Clear Politics on December 1 that the Supreme Court should defend itself by overturning rather than upholding Roe.
Wold wrote: “The majority’s opinion in Roe has undermined the court’s legitimacy for nearly a half-century. Roe relied on dubious reasoning to remove a contentious policy issue from the reach of the American people, placing all abortion policy in the hands of the unelected and unaccountable judiciary. As a result, Roe has politicized the Court and poisoned the judiciary.”
The Roe Court delivered its opinion despite knowing that more than half the states banned abortion except to save a mother’s life, that the Hippocratic Oath had forbidden abortion for thousands of years, “and that abortion had been restricted under civil, canon, and Anglo-American common law,” Wold wrote.
As just another example of Roe’s irrationality — an overreach that even Bill Clinton-appointed pro-abortion Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg subsequently criticized — Wold pointed to the Court’s claiming that the 14th Amendment protected choosing abortion, even though 30 of the then-37 states in the U.S. banned abortion by the time that amendment was ratified.

Pelosi And The Pope

As to viability, even The Washington Post noted on December 1: “In 1973, babies born at 28 weeks of pregnancy were thought to have little chance of survival. In the following decades, however, that timeline compressed by about one week every 10 years, thanks to medical advances and better understanding of treatments.”
The Post story added: “These include the administration of steroids to the mother before a premature delivery to help with a baby’s lung development, and new instruments for performing delicate surgery on tiny babies.”
Bad Catholic pro-abortion fanatic Pelosi, who had dashed off to Rome in October to exchange loving smiles with Pope Francis, was in her usual mode as a “hitman” for the “murder” that is abortion, to use the Pope’s own terms, as she warned that the Court better protect it.
The Washington Examiner posted on December 1 that Pelosi — using her familiar euphemisms — said the Court had the “responsibility to honor the Constitution, the law, and this basic truth: Every woman has the constitutional right to basic reproductive health care.”
The Mississippi law at issue, Pelosi huffed, is “part of a nationwide assault against women’s freedoms” and “is brazenly unconstitutional and designed to destroy Roe v. Wade.”
Demeaning mothers who don’t work outside the home, and pushing the propaganda line that they must be “freed” from giving too much attention to childbearing, with the assistance of such tools as permissive abortion, goes back to the early days of the radical feminist movement that detested men.
These feminists completely broke with historic feminism, which saw abortion as an evil, not a necessity.
In addition to Roe and Doe themselves, left-wingers live in a fantasy world where permissive abortion is wonderful and the public celebrates it every day. But the Washington Examiner noted on December 1:
“That didn’t happen last month in blue Virginia. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe spent millions telling voters that his opponent would sign a restrictive abortion law like the one that had just taken effect in Texas. Exit polling shows that the voters who voted based on abortion actually broke for the Republican, Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin, by 20 points.”
The Court is expected to announce its opinion by next June.

Share Button

2019 The Wanderer Printing Co.

Vatican and USCCB leave transgender policy texts unpublished

While U.S. bishops have made headlines for releasing policies addressing gender identity and pastoral ministry, guidelines on the subject have been drafted but not published by both the U.S. bishops’ conference and the Vatican’s doctrinal office, leaving diocesan bishops to…Continue Reading

Biden says Pope Francis told him to continue receiving communion, amid scrutiny over pro-abortion policies

President Biden said that Pope Francis, during their meeting Friday in Vatican City, told him that he should continue to receive communion, amid heightened scrutiny of the Catholic president’s pro-abortion policies.  The president, following the approximately 90-minute-long meeting, a key…Continue Reading

Federal judge rules in favor of Gov. DeSantis’ mask mandate ban

MIAMI (LifeSiteNews) – A federal judge this week handed Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis another legal victory on his mask mandate ban for schools. On Wednesday, Judge K. Michael Moore of the Southern District of Florida denied a petition from…Continue Reading

The Eucharist should not be received unworthily, says Nigerian cardinal

Priests have a duty to remind Catholics not to receive the Eucharist in a state of serious sin and to make confession easily available, a Nigerian cardinal said at the International Eucharistic Congress on Thursday. “It is still the doctrine…Continue Reading

Donald Trump takes a swipe at Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him

Donald Trump complained about Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him in 2020. The former president made the comments in a conference call featuring religious leaders. The move could be seen to shore up his religious conservative base…Continue Reading

Y Gov. Kathy Hochul Admits Andrew Cuomo Covered Up COVID Deaths, 12,000 More Died Than Reported

When it comes to protecting people from COVID, Andrew Cuomo is already the worst governor in America. New York has the second highest death rate per capita, in part because he signed an executive order putting COVID patients in nursing…Continue Reading

Prayers For Cardinal Burke . . . U.S. Cardinal Burke says he has tested positive for COVID-19

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke said he has tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. In an Aug. 10 tweet, he wrote: “Praised be Jesus Christ! I wish to inform you that I have recently…Continue Reading

Democrats Block Amendment Banning Late-Term Abortions, Stopping Abortions Up to Birth

Senate Democrats have blocked an amendment that would ban abortions on babies older than 20 weeks. During consideration of the multi-trillion spending package, pro-life Louisiana Senator John Kennedy filed an amendment to ban late-term abortions, but Democrats steadfastly support killing…Continue Reading

Transgender student wins as U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs bathroom appeal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to a transgender former public high school student who waged a six-year legal battle against a Virginia county school board that had barred him from using the bathroom corresponding…Continue Reading

New York priest accused by security guard of assault confirms charges have now been dropped

NEW YORK, June 17, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A New York priest has made his first public statement regarding the dismissal of charges against him.  Today Father George W. Rutler reached out to LifeSiteNews and other media today with the following…Continue Reading

21,000 sign petition protesting US Catholic bishops vote on Biden, abortion

More than 21,000 people have signed a letter calling for U.S. Catholic bishops to cancel a planned vote on whether President Biden should receive communion.  Biden, a Catholic, supports abortion rights and has long come under attack from some Catholics over that…Continue Reading

Bishop Gorman seeks candidates to fill two full time AP level teaching positions for the 2021-2022 school year in the subject areas of Calculus/Statistics and Physics

Bishop Thomas K. Gorman Regional Catholic School is a college preparatory school located in Tyler, Texas. It is an educational ministry of the Catholic Diocese of Tyler led by Bishop Joseph Strickland. The sixth through twelfth grade school provides a…Continue Reading

Untitled 5 Untitled 2

Attention Readers:

  Welcome to our website. Readers who are familiar with The Wanderer know we have been providing Catholic news and orthodox commentary for 150 years in our weekly print edition.


  Our daily version offers only some of what we publish weekly in print. To take advantage of everything The Wanderer publishes, we encourage you to su
bscribe to our flagship weekly print edition, which is mailed every Friday or, if you want to view it in its entirety online, you can subscribe to the E-edition, which is a replica of the print edition.
 
  Our daily edition includes: a selection of material from recent issues of our print edition, news stories updated daily from renowned news sources, access to archives from The Wanderer from the past 10 years, available at a minimum charge (this will be expanded as time goes on). Also: regularly updated features where we go back in time and highlight various columns and news items covered in The Wanderer over the past 150 years. And: a comments section in which your remarks are encouraged, both good and bad, including suggestions.
 
  We encourage you to become a daily visitor to our site. If you appreciate our site, tell your friends. As Catholics we must band together to rediscover our faith and share it with the world if we are to effectively counter a society whose moral culture seems to have no boundaries and a government whose rapidly extending reach threatens to extinguish the rights of people of faith to practice their religion (witness the HHS mandate). Now more than ever, vehicles like The Wanderer are needed for clarification and guidance on the issues of the day.

Catholic, conservative, orthodox, and loyal to the Magisterium have been this journal’s hallmarks for five generations. God willing, our message will continue well into this century and beyond.

Joseph Matt
President, The Wanderer Printing Co.

Untitled 1

Catechism

Today . . .

U.S. birth and fertility rates drop to record lows, according to CDC report

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 26, 2024 / 16:45 pm Provisional data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this week showed that the fertility rate in the United States hit a record low and the total number of births in the country was the lowest it’s been in decades.  According to the report, slightly fewer than 3.6 million babies were born in 2023, or 54.4 births per 1,000 women aged 15 through…Continue Reading

Kamala Harris Heads to Arizona to Promote Abortions Up to Birth

Kamala Harris is visiting Arizona today to showcase the Biden-Harris Administration’s radical support of unlimited abortion. “Kamala Harris has become the abortion czar of the Biden Administration,” said Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee. “Instead of joining with the pro-life movement to build programs and safety nets to help promote real solutions for women and their preborn children, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have engaged in fearmongering and propaganda,” Tobias continue

May Everyone Have a Blessed and Joyful Easter

Is Easter being replaced with the ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’?

Two observances — Easter and the recently contrived “International Transgender Day of Visibility” — fall on Sunday, March 31 this year, causing some to wonder “Is Easter being replaced with the ‘Transgender Day of Visibility?’” It’s a valid question. For more than a few, it certainly will. Others might dismiss this as nothing more than a coincidence. That would be a mistake. On the last day of this month, we will witness a clash of religions as…Continue Reading

Abortion Advocates No Longer Consider It “A Necessary Evil,” They Celebrate Killing Babies

Last week, Kamala Harris became the first vice president in U.S. history to make a public visit to an abortion clinic. Though the Democratic party’s support for abortion is nothing new, Harris’ Planned Parenthood appearance does illustrate how that support has become a flagrant celebration of abortion as a public and personal good, essential to both “freedom” and to “healthcare.” At the appearance, Harris proclaimed,  It is only right and fair that people have access…Continue Reading

The King of Kings

Cindy Paslawski We are at the end of the Church year. We began with Advent a year ago, commemorating the time awaiting the coming of the Christ and we are ending these weeks later with a vision of the future, a vision of Christ the King of the Universe on His throne before us all.…Continue Reading

7,000 Pro-Lifers March In London

By STEVEN ERTELT LONDON (LifeNews) — Over the weekend, some seven thousand pro-life people in the UK participated in the March for Life in London to protest abortion.They marched to Parliament Square on Saturday, September 2 under the banner of “Freedom to Live” and had to deal with a handful of radical abortion activists.During the…Continue Reading

An Appeal For Prayer For The Armenian People

By RAYMOND LEO CARDINAL BURKE (Editor’s Note: His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke on August 29, 2023, issued this prayer for the Armenian people, noting their unceasing love for Christ, even in the face of persecution.) + + On the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, having a few days ago celebrated the…Continue Reading

Robert Hickson, Founding Member Of Christendom College, Dies At 80

By MAIKE HICKSON FRONT ROYAL, Va. (LifeSiteNews) — Robert David Hickson, Jr., of Front Royal, Va., died at his home on September 2, 2023, at 21:29 p.m. after several months of suffering and after having received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. He was surrounded by friends and family.Robert is survived by me —…Continue Reading

The Real Hero Of “Sound of Freedom”… Says The Film Has Strengthened The Fight Against Child Trafficking

By ANA PAULA MORALES (CNA) —Tim Ballard, a former U.S. Homeland Security agent who risked his life to fight child trafficking, discussed the impact of the movie Sound of Freedom, which is based on his work, in an August 29 interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. “I’ve spent more than 20 years helping…Continue Reading

Advertisement

Our Catholic Faith (Section B of print edition)

Catholic Replies

Editor’s Note: This lesson on medical-moral issues is taken from the book Catholicism & Ethics. Please feel free to use the series for high schoolers or adults. We will continue to welcome your questions for the column as well. The email and postal addresses are given at the end of this column. Special Course On Catholicism And Ethics (Pages 53-59)…Continue Reading

Color Politics An Impediment To Faith

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK The USCCB is rightly concerned about racism, as they should be about any sin. In the 2018 statement Open Wide Our Hearts, they affirm the dignity of every human person: “But racism still profoundly affects our culture, and it has no place in the Christian heart. This evil causes great harm to its victims, and…Continue Reading

Trademarks Of The True Messiah

By MSGR. CHARLES POPE (Editor’s Note: Msgr. Charles Pope posted this essay on September 2, and it is reprinted here with permission.) + + In Sunday’s Gospel the Lord firmly sets before us the need for the cross, not as an end in itself, but as the way to glory. Let’s consider the Gospel in three stages.First: The Pattern That…Continue Reading

A Beacon Of Light… The Holy Cross And Jesus’ Unconditional Love

By FR. RICHARD D. BRETON Each year on September 14 the Church celebrates the Feast Day of the Exultation of the Holy Cross. The Feast Day of the Triumph of the Holy Cross commemorates the day St. Helen found the True Cross. It is fitting then, that today we should focus on the final moments of Jesus’ life on the…Continue Reading

Our Ways Must Become More Like God’s Ways

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Twenty-Fifth Sunday In Ordinary Time (YR A) Readings: Isaiah 55:6-9Phil. 1:20c-24, 27aMatt. 20:1-16a In the first reading today, God tells us through the Prophet Isaiah that His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways. This should not come as a surprise to anyone, especially when we look at what the Lord…Continue Reading

The Devil And The Democrats

By FR. DENIS WILDE, OSA States such as Minnesota, California, Maryland, and others, in all cases with Democrat-controlled legislatures, are on a fast track to not only allow unborn babies to be murdered on demand as a woman’s “constitutional right” but also to allow infanticide.Our nation has gotten so used to the moral evil of killing in the womb that…Continue Reading

Crushed But Unbroken . . . The Martyrdom Of St. Margaret Clitherow

By RAY CAVANAUGH The late-1500s were a tough time for Catholics in England, where the Reformation was in full gear. A 1581 law prohibited Catholic religious ceremonies. And a 1584 Act of Parliament mandated that all Catholic priests leave the country or else face execution. Some chose to remain, however, so they could continue serving the faithful.Also taking huge risks…Continue Reading

Advertisement(2)