Abortion

Many are worried about losing their abortion rights now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. In some states, abortion will now be heavily or fully restricted, while other states are busy trying to keep the procedure available throughout all nine months of pregnancy — even though 65 percent of Americans support banning most abortions after the first trimester. With Roe gone, each state will have free rein to create abortion laws, and some are intent on expanding and maintaining radical, unregulated options. It’s not just about access to abortion, but proper medical care for women undergoing them and protection for babies who may ultimately survive them. To this end, abortion radicals have little to offer.

On Friday, June 3, assailants vandalized the Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center, not far from Cockburn's Washington home. An unknown party splashed a gallon of red paint on the center’s front door and doormat, as well as egging the place and spraying graffiti on the walls that said, “JANE SAYS REVENGE.” “As the day unfolded, there was a lot of positive outreach," Janet Durig, the pregnancy center’s executive director, told Cockburn. "We’ve had people asking from all over the area asking if anything is damaged or needs to be replaced.” She also said, “The police were extremely helpful.

It's been almost a month since Politico scooped its bombshell leak, an unprecedented revelation of a draft majority opinion in a still-pending Supreme Court case. That leaked draft opinion, penned by the stalwart Justice Samuel Alito in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, would finally overturn 1973’s infamous Roe v. Wade abortion decision. Alito’s draft opinion does not go far enough, at least as far as the proper pro-life end goal is concerned, but it is a praiseworthy development and an admirable start toward an abortion-free America.

Something felt off about Mother’s Day this year. For one weekend every May, we post social media tributes and bow to marketing campaigns thanking our moms, letting them know they’ve given us something that can never be repaid. But that same weekend, the national news cycle was caught up in the drama — and the fear — generated by the mysterious leak less than a week earlier of a draft majority opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito that would overturn Roe v. Wade and return the issue of legal abortion to the states. By that Sunday, we’d seen maternity clinics and Catholic churches vandalized, protests in front of the homes of Supreme Court justices, and ominous warnings from the mainstream press explaining what women stand to lose if Roe falls.

Americans just got a window into why the left holds the “right” to an abortion to be so sacrosanct. During an exchange between Senator Tim Scott and Treasury secretary Janet Yellen, Yellen told Scott, "What we are talking about is whether or not women will have the ability to regulate their reproductive situation in ways that will enable them to plan lives that are fulfilling and satisfying for them. One aspect of a satisfying life is being able to feel you have the financial resources to raise a child." What message does that send to young women? That money, not starting a family, is how one lives a life that is fulfilling and satisfying. That one cannot lead a life that is meaningful with a burden, er, baby.

At the conservative Christian schools I attended from kindergarten through the end of undergrad, I became familiar with two types of believers: the knuckle-draggers and the nuance-mongers. The knuckle-draggers didn’t swear or drink. They watched dumb faith-based movies like God’s Not Dead. Secular music was suspect. Any engagement with the products of mainstream culture was accompanied by a humorless and formulaic discussion of how said opus fit into a “Christian worldview.” And when election time rolled around, they didn’t have to think twice. Only one issue mattered. Democrats wanted to kill babies, so voting anything other than a straight GOP ticket was out of the question.

Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked majority opinion in this Supreme Court term’s marquee abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, ought to be applauded by pro-lifers. In many ways, the opinion represents an epochal triumph for the conservative legal movement that I, despite being a clear part of, have often been quick to criticize. If Alito’s five-justice coalition holds — and it remains an “if” until the moment the opinion is formally released — then the decades-long architects of the movement will deserve credit for finally fulfilling one of the movement’s raison d'êtres, the overturning of the odious Roe v. Wade decision.

Not one American in a hundred has read Roe v. Wade, and perhaps no more of us really understand how a Supreme Court majority of seven justices barred — or, if you prefer, relieved — everyone else from coming to political terms on abortion. Think of Roe as a dispensation from the fraught business of democratic decision-making. It appears that respite is now nearing an end. Europe has set the example. It's where the US seems headed — into years of political fights in one jurisdiction after another, but in states rather than countries. Only with time has most of Europe managed to settle into norms usually established by legislatures reaching compromise aside from any creed, whether that of the Catholic Church or Planned Parenthood.