Editorial Excerpts, June 2022

… Many who oppose Roe v. Wade today, and even some who support it, argue that the 1973 ruling short-circuited a running debate over abortion, a debate that should have been allowed to play out in the states, many of which had long banned abortion. This is one of the main justifications in the leaked draft opinion in which a majority of Supreme Court justices appear ready to overturn Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision that preserved Roe’s central holding with certain restrictions.

The problem with this reasoning is that … leaving the matter to individual states and the political process means that millions of Americans will be denied their fundamental rights—in this case, the right of women to decide what happens inside their own bodies. …

Women and men should have equal control over their own bodies, as many Americans believed in 1973 and a majority believe today. And yet the right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy is on the verge of being eliminated because five members of the current Supreme Court don’t like it. …

Overall, the outlook for reproductive freedom is bleak. In 13 states, “trigger” laws will automatically or very quickly ban abortions after Roe is overturned, as seems highly likely. In about a dozen other states, lawmakers are gearing up to severely restrict access to abortions, if not effectively prohibit them, as Texas has already done without interference by the Supreme Court. …

What all this shows is that the right to an abortion cannot be left at the mercy of individual states—something that few people on either side of this issue genuinely seem to want.

This is why a national standard is necessary. That national standard, at least for a few more weeks, is Roe v. Wade as modified by Planned Parenthood v. Casey. These two rulings are not perfect, but for all their flaws, they have managed to strike a delicate balance that reflects the public’s complex position on a morally fraught issue. The majority of Americans do not want these cases overturned, and an overwhelming majority say that abortion should not be banned outright. …

– The New York Times, May 6, 2022

… The so-called protectors of life also rarely notice that the U.S. states with restrictive abortion bans score poorly on most metrics that measure the quality of life for families and children, such as maternal morbidity, infant mortality, premature birth, access to health care, day care, food, and housing.

… The majority of mothers forced to give birth will be of low-income, the Guttmacher Institute reports; they live in a country that doesn’t provide job protection for 40 percent of its workers following a birth, and their childcare options are often out of reach. …

The same pro-life pretenders seek to repeal the Affordable Care Act, they want to defund Planned Parenthood, and they even remain silent when we rip children from their mothers at the border and put them in cages. From the moment Trump slashed education (15 percent), children’s health care (10 percent), and child nutrition (9 percent) to pay for his tax cuts, they have been mute.

But you can always rely on them to advocate for the unborn, because children of the zygote variety don’t need education, health care, or food.

A Methodist minister from Alabama, Dave Barnhart, said it best: “You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.”

… The abortion debate has been rekindled, and it’s white-hot. But the needs of American children, a moral obscenity that has been neglected for too long by pro-life crusaders, must start now.

– Star-Ledger, May 5, 2022