By Dave Andrusko
Editor’s note. This appeared on page two of the first post-Roe v. Wade issue of National Right to Life News. Please be sure to pass this and the contents of the entire 41 page edition to your pro-life family and friends.
I’ve been blessed to be the editor of NRL News since August 1981. There have many peaks—and valleys—in those four decades but nothing to compare with the excitement of being at the opening General Session of National Right to Life’s 51st annual convention in Atlanta and hearing a voice in the back of room boom out, “Roe is overturned!”
Many, many thoughts raced through my mind. All the heroes. All the dedication. All the sacrifice. But my first thought was, “Thank you, President Trump!” It was his three appointments to the High Court—Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett—that made this decision possible. Thank you, President Trump.
But—you knew there would be a “but”—Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health did not end our struggle for the littlest Americans. It was a necessary but not a sufficient victory. As Jacki Ragan, our indefatigable convention director, tells us in her story, it was NRLC Executive Director, Dr. David N. O’Steen, who said that the decision in Dobbs gave us “freedom to protect unborn children.” But “when evil is cornered, it comes back ferociously,” he warned us. “We have a real struggle before us.”
Part of that struggle is because the fate of unborn babies is caught up in the Democrats’ war against democracy. President Biden chose, of all days, Independence Day, the 4th of July, to smear us. Speaking at a NATO meeting in Spain, he said
“After doing the hard work of laying the foundation for a better future, the worst of our past has reached out and pulled us back on occasion. . .
“Liberty is under assault. . . In recent days, there’s been reason to think that this country is moving backward, that freedom is being reduced, that rights we assumed were protected are no longer. A reminder that we remain in an ongoing battle for the soul of America, as we have for over 200 years.”
As Gary Bauer observed, “The left-wing media universally declared that this was a reference to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and the overturning of Roe v. Wade.” A not surprising conclusion, given what he had just said at a press conference.
The “one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States and overruling not only Roe v. Wade but essentially challenging the right to privacy,” Biden said. “We›ve been a leader in the world in terms of personal rights and privacy rights, and it is a mistake, in my view, for the Supreme Court to do what it did.»
But “Attacking a core American institution like the Supreme Court from the world stage is below the dignity of the president,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “He’s upset that the court said the people, through their elected representatives, will have a say on abortion policy. That does not destabilize democracy — it affirms it.”
Far from representing “rights we assumed were protected [that] are no longer,” Dobbs stood for a restoration of rights—to the American people and to unborn children. Dobbs was about the rights of the citizenry to settle questions such abortion in spirited debate at the state level.
But, no matter. Every Democrat will read off the same script in spite of what Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito had said:
“And to ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
To Democrats, desperate to debate anything but abortion, Dobbs had to be about same sex marriage and contraception.
The Democrats’ standard bearers—most of the media and particularly the New York Times and the Washington Post—pitched in to do their part to delegitimize the Supreme Court. They blew off how incredibly dangerous this ploy was if it served their purposes–to soften resistance to packing the court or to “providing an exception” to the filibuster rule.
That’s why you must read Dr. O’Steen’s and Political Director Karen Cross’s stories. The stakes this November cannot be exaggerated. The Democrats will do anything and everything to win.
You need these, for example, to counter The New York Times’s Blake Hounshell’s interview with fellow Times reporter Kate Zernike. According to Zernike, “[T]he anti-abortion side has skillfully played that to accuse Democrats of wanting ‘abortion on demand’— anytime, in any circumstance, right up until birth.”
What is “that” which we have so “skillfully played”?
Younger leaders in particular are upset about what they see as too much compromising from Democrats on abortion. They want to talk about an absolute, inviolable right to abortion: You have to trust women to make their own decisions, they say, and any infringement takes away from women’s autonomy and equal rights.
We aren’t “accusing Democrats” of wanting abortion on demand because of “younger leaders.” Congressional leadership, anything but young, are working feverish to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act which would erase present—and future—limitations on abortion: any limitations!
We have multiple challenges ahead of us, but what else is new? The gigantic difference is we don’t have the anchor of Roe v. Wade hanging around our necks. As are you, I am reinvigorated and ready to work harder than ever.
Can you imagine a better time to be a champion of unborn babies?
