National Celebrate Life Day - Not A Stellar Look

On Saturday June 24, 2023, I attended the National Celebrate Life Day on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in celebration of the first anniversary of the Dobbs decision that ended Roe v Wade.  Almost 60 years ago, Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech from those same steps, although he was higher up on the steps than Saturday's speakers were.

I arrived late, but fortunately the video of the entire thing is online.  I was able to collect some photos of my own.  I will report off the official video and will post it below my remarks.  Speakers included Alveda King, Lila Rose, Kristan Hawkins.  Rose, in her remarks, opined that protection for the unborn child does not require another constitutional amendment for protection as that already exists under the 14th Amendment.  That would be true, IF all agreed upon the definition of personhood.  They don't.  That is why a constitutional amendment that spells out when personhood begins, namely, when sperm enters the ovum, is needed.

I arrived just as Mike Pence was introduced.  My immediate reaction was disappointment, and as his talk progressed, my misgivings were confirmed.  He remarked on the Dobbs ruling, giving credit and thanks to pro-lifers' prayer and work for that ruling. He also gave credit to pro-life leaders.  Most conspicuous, though, was any lack of mention of Donald Trump's pivotal role in that victory.  It was Trump who nominated three of the five justices that voted to overturn Roe.  He suggested that we work and pray to advance the cause of life.  That is precisely what he should have done, when he, as Vice President, had the opportunity and responsibility to thwart the obviously bogus presidential election of 2020.  His words ring hollow, especially when he said that we will work every day to elect leaders that will stand without apology for the unborn.  In fact, he undermined the presidency of the man who made the Dobbs decision possible.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, in her talk, made mention of a president who kept his promises.  It's a pity that she couldn't utter the word "Trump".  Linn Fitch, the Attorney General of Mississippi, started by saying that she and her team argued for returning the matter to the states.  Given the parameters put forth in the Dobbs legal action, that may have been all that they could argue.  That doesn't mean that generally we must settle for that.

Sometime later, Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, offered her remarks.  She stated that "we are going to end abortion because we are going to take away the need for it".  Stop right there!  One cannot talk about a "need" for an intrinsic evil.  That is an oxymoron.  There might be a warped desire for it, but never a need for it.  We simply must stop being sloppy with language and terminology.  Our use of language must be precise and disciplined at all times. 

When Chad Pechnold, a professor at Catholic University of America, took the stand, he stated that we could not return the abortion matter to the states, disagreeing with what the MS attorney general stated shortly before he took the stand.  He stated that the President must recognize the personhood of the child and afford that child the protections due under the 14th Amendment.  Again, this to me only solidifies the need to set in stone the definition of personhood.  He evinced what I believe to be an overly confident attitude towards the courts.  The courts can only act within their constitutional bounds, and that action is largely dependent on the judges that sit at those benches.  I will say this, though, for Dr. Pechnold; he seemed to be the only speaker who might have been older than 40 years of age.  I'll have more to say on that later in this post.

Nicole Hunt of Focus on the Family took the podium.  She repeated a common misunderstanding in stating that babies' status as human beings begins in the womb.  That's not quite so.  A human person comes into existence when sperm fertilizes ovum, but that usually occurs in the Fallopian tubes.  Then the new person, in his/her zygote stage, travels to the uterus to implant there.  The child's cell count is already increasing as the migration takes place.  A human life amendment to the Constitution would have to specify the exact stage of the beginning of personhood - the meeting of sperm and ovum.

All in all, this rally left me with quite a few misgivings.  With the exceptions of the professor from CUA and Micheal Henney, most of the speakers seemed to be on the younger side.  They projected exuberance, to be sure, but they didn't advise the attendees that the struggle is going to increase in intensity that can be disconcerting and even frightening.  Why was no mention made of the Red Rose Rescuers who, even today, are facing jail sentences?  Why no mention of Mark Houck and the persecution that he underwent last winter?  Why no mention of Dick Schaefer and Mark Crosby who were severely beaten up as they witnessed in front of the Baltimore Planned Parenthood two months ago?  Where were older, more "battle-hardened" leaders like Randall Terry, Monica Miller, Troy Newman, Brian Gibson?  I realize that they may have distracted from the appearance of a happy-clappy celebration, but is that appearance realistic?

How did all this de facto cheer-leading prepare the attendees for the hard-scrabble fight that is ahead of us?  As we tell the truth, we will make others uncomfortable - not just the hard-boiled pro-aborts, but also those who would rather keep their heads buried in the sand.

I think I know now why Donald Trump, who placed an essential role in the Dobbs case, was unmentioned.  For all his faults, he is not afraid of a fight.  He is ready to get in there and mix it up as the need arises.  His example is a stark reminder that we pro-life people have to be similarly prepared to do so.  Many are, but by and large, they were not represented on the podium of the Celebrate Life Rally.  If we are to bring about protection for the babies, we pro-lifers must harden our noses, put some calcium in our backbones and thicken our skins.  We must cease being afraid to get some dirt under our fingernails, get a little scrappy, to raise our voices and firmly rebuke the proponents of death.

One incident that happened just after the rally broke up brought these points to crystal clarity in my mind.  A young pro-abort strolled through the crowd with a pro-abort poster that said something to the effect of "protect women's rights, keep abortion legal".  I watched this for a few minutes.  No one stopped him to take issue with his statements or to refute his logic.  In fact, they were all smiley with him as they took pictures of him and his sign.  Finally I chimed in, saying "protect slave-owners' rights, keep slavery legal".  I was using his own logic, using slavery instead of abortion as the topic.  He then said, they weren't the same as he scurried away.  I followed him for a little bit and challenged him.  He just tried to get away.  

Finally other pro-lifers decided to pipe in - by rebuking me, not the pro-abort.  They claimed I was racist because I'm white and the guy was black.  So I fired back at them and they too scurried away.  If this is the kind of nicey-nice lack of mental acumen that our young pro-life activists are expected to demonstrate, babies are going to pay the price, as will western civilization and Christianity.

It is way past time to knock the stars out of our eyes, act like adults and get serious about ending abortion and bringing about a Godly culture in our country.

Dobbs - What It Means For Pro-Life Activists

Note: Although I wrote the below article for a local Maryland publication, the same ideas are applicable for many areas of the United States.

(begin article)

On January 22, 1973, the US Supreme Court handed down two decisions that paved the way for the slaughter of millions of babies in the US alone: Roe v Wade and Doe v Balton.  Roe v Wade basically rendered unenforceable all state laws that either limited or banned abortion.  Roe removed all limits during the first trimester of pregnancy and Doe removed them in later parts of the pregnancy “to protect the health of the mother”.  However, Doe’s definition of “health of the mother” included all factors such as “emotional, familial” etc.  This definition therefore included any factors desired by the mother.  Both of these combined amounted to abortion on demand with no restriction whatsoever.  

The premises of Roe were acknowledged by both sides of the abortion controversy to be constitutionally flawed.  First, there is the false premise of “privacy”.  It is based on a faulty reading of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution that barred “unreasonable search and seizure”.  The operative word there is “unreasonable”, for the usage of that word admits the existence of reasonable searches and seizures.  The false premise was utilized in the 1965 case known as Griswold v Connecticut; that ruling allowed for the usage of contraceptives.  It’s interesting that even here we see how the usage of contraceptives paved the way for baby-slaughter, but I digress. 

Built into the Roe decision was the acknowledgement that if the fetus were indeed a person, all abortion bans would be constitutional as the unborn child would enjoy all constitutional protections per the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution.  Since 1973, medical advances have been made that demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that the unborn child is as fully human as any adult.  We have the sonogram, for instance, that shows a very human face on the unborn child in his/her mother’s uterus.  We also have seen many advances that have decreased the age at which the unborn child can survive outside of the womb, resulting in the arbitrary benchmark of “viability” being decreased. 

With the acknowledgement of Roe’s eventual demise, both pro-abortion and pro-life advocates have been struggling to enact legislation that would either codify Roe v Wade on state books or reinforce protections for unborn children.  On the federal level, pro-abortion activists were successful in having enacted the Freedom of Choice Act after Bill Clinton took office.  Many of us in Maryland will recall the epic battle over SB162 that was enacted to liberalize abortion laws in Maryland, going even beyond the federal Freedom of Choice Act.  Not too surprisingly, that passed, making Maryland a veritable abortion bonanza – more on Maryland later. 

A few abortion regulation cases over the years made it to the Supreme Court, only to have the cases decided for the pro-abortion positions owing to the make-up of the Supreme Court.  However, after Donald Trump took office, he replaced Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Rita Ginsberg with Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Comey-Barrett respectively, giving a different tilt to the Court. 

On Dec 1, the Supreme Court heard arguments for the Mississippi case called Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.  Jackson Women’s Health Organization is Mississippi’s lone abortion mill.  They bristled at the 2018 legislation called the Gestational Age Act that limited their baby-slaughter to the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.  Note that this law directly contradicts Roe v Wade; the latter stated that abortion in the first trimester could not be limited.  I want to reiterate that Roe is a court ruling, not enacted law. 

I won’t go into any particulars of the discussions during that Supreme Court hearing.  Suffice it to say that the Trump appointees gave indications that they were seriously considering the scientific and constitutional issues underlying the Dobbs case while some Obama appointees displayed quite the opposite.  There is hope that the Mississippi law will stand, meaning the overthrow of Roe v Wade. 

The demise of Roe would mean that the anti-abortion laws that several states have would now be enforceable.  In other words, babies would enjoy some safety depending on their location.  Therefore, in some states they would be safe, while still threatened in other states. 

Maryland is among that latter group.  Some of us will remember the big abortion battle in Maryland during the 1992 elections, where we fought against SB 162 that legalized abortion in Maryland for any reason and any stage of gestation.  We lost that battle and as a result, Maryland is seen by abortionists as a mecca for baby-slaughter.  Hence we have the likes of Leroy Carhart setting up shop in Montgomery County, a locale that is particularly friendly to abortionists. 

We can glean some lessons from this scenario.  As noted earlier in this article, President Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices who are now hearing this case.  Had Hillary Clinton won that election, we know for a fact that she would have appointed pro-abortion justices; she loudly proclaimed that herself.  Under her court, this case would never have been allowed to see the light of day. 

Another lesion we can learn is the importance of local-level elections.  If Roe is scuttled, the abortion conflict descends to state levels.  Therefore we now see that we must elect pro-life candidates in all levels of government.  

I will now take a moment to address a regrettable tendency among pro-life people that was on display during the 2016 presidential elections.  Then we were presented with two candidates.  Neither one could have been held as a paragon of virtue.  However, one candidate made very clear her intent to promote baby-killing, the normalization of sexual perversion and a host of other evils.  The other, with his admittedly chequered past, promised the opposite.  Misguided pro-lifers trumpeted their disdain in voting for the “lesser of two evils” and decided not to vote at all.  Well, since Our Lord is never a candidate for election, it will be safe to assume that only flawed human beings will seek election.  Such are our options.  To not vote is itself a dereliction of duty to at least mitigate any harm to be done to civic life.  Again, had Trump not won, we would not be presented with this opportunity at all. 

There have always been hopes of passing a human life amendment to the US Constitution, guaranteeing constitutional protections to unborn people.  In order for that to happen, the amendment must receive 2/3 votes from both houses of the US Congress and be ratified by 3/4 of the state legislatures.  This will require much political activism on our parts.  To those who claim that the abortion matter will not be solved by politics, I reply that they are correct in saying that politics itself will not be sufficient.  However, politics will be necessary as we strive for protection of the unborn child. 

For Maryland, an immediate consequence of Roe’s demise would be an uptick in the numbers of abortions committed here.  The bordering states of Virginia and Pennsylvania do have abortion restrictions on their books that would become enforceable.  Once that happens, abortion-bound persons would be crossing into Maryland to murder their children.  Therefore, pro-life people, more than ever, will be needed in front of the abortion centers to pray and to offer assistance to abortion-bound women. 

Will you accept the opportunities and challenges that a Roe reversal would bring to Maryland?