Roe v Wade was decided when I was 17 years old. Frankly, the way things were going, I didn't think I'd live to see this day, but here we are. The ruling is not only an unambiguous smack-down of Roe but also of Casey v Planned Parenthood, picking apart their constitutional flaws.
By God's grace we have finally cleared a major hurdle, but there are many more to be surmounted. We give thanks to God while not only maintaining but increasing our stride. The little pro-abort darlings who chided us for years to "respect the court decisions" announced that tonight they intend to engage in temper tantrums that they call the "summer of rage". They have already vandalized a number of Catholic churches and pro-life pregnancy centers. Hmm... I wonder why they only target Catholic churches. Might it be that they are acknowledging a truth that some of our protestant friends won't? But I digress.
While I lived to see the day, many of my pro-life colleagues passed on. I will now give them a shout-out, in no particular order. To keep this list at a reasonable length, I'll only list those with whom I worked in one degree or another. Some are nationally-known, but many were local folks. They are: Nellie Gray, Joe Scheidler, Norma McCorvey, Marilyn Szewczyk, John Marcus, John Jay Daly, Anthony Sheehan, George Offerman, Cookie Harris, Kristin Kazyak, Jim Sharbaugh, Jim Sedlak, Mike Fritz, Bill Ferris, Bill Simpson, Bill Luksic, Dick Retta, Francis Popper, Francois Quinson, Robert Kling. I'm sure their prayers were joined with ours in overturning that Roe beast and those prayers will continue to be with us.
This is no time for slacking off, for "resting on our laurels", as it were. We must redouble our prayers and efforts. We must continue to offer our daily Masses, pray our daily rosaries. We must continue with our pro-life apostolates and work to elect good pro-life people to public office.
Let me draw special attention to that last sentence. In 2016, a fair number of misguided and perhaps "mis-motivated" pro-life people thumbed their noses at Donald Trump, claiming that he wasn't pro-life enough for their overly-dainty tastes. I've chided them quite a bit during that time; see here and here.
When I wrote those posts six years ago, I didn't know how true those words would ring. Donald Trump won the White House and kept his promise to appoint judges and justices who would interpret the Constitution as originally written. Thus, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett were appointed Supreme Court justices. Today's Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs involved several written opinions. The vote to uphold the Mississippi law was 6-3. Of those 6, Chief Justice Roberts voted to uphold the Mississippi law, but not to overturn Roe and Casey. That vote was really 5-4. Three of the five were the justices that Trump appointed (Alito and Thomas being the other two). Had the "nevertrumpers" in pro-life circles had their way, this victory for the babies would never have occurred. Trump is owed much credit for keeping his word.
Frankly, I believe this ruling to have particular spiritual significance. For nearly 50 years, with the de facto legalization of baby-slaughter, the United States as a nation has incurred the blood-guilt of over 60 million babies murdered since January 1973. Now that ruling has ended and some purification has begun. Today both Texas and Missouri have declared their states abortion-free. Mississippi's law stands. Other state bans, in limbo till now, can be enforced.
We have another presidential election in two years. For now, let us focus on our local elections, especially since the overtuning of Roe puts the fight for the babies back to local governments.