In the summer of 2013, pro-life and pro-abortion forces met in a battle symbolized by an icon of pink tennis shoes worn by abortion crusader and heroine, Wendy Davis.
Davis and her infamous pink footwear filibustered for almost 11 hours on June 25, 2013. She became the symbol of a woman’s right to abortion, telling her touching, if fabricated, story everywhere. NARAL gaggles protested outside the Texas statehouse with pictures of coat hangers and worse.
But Davis and her hordes of pro-abortion forces failed to persuade the people of Texas, who chose life.
Texas Governor Rick Perry signed Texas Senate Bill 5 (which would become 1/3 of Texas House Bill 2) into law on July 18, 2013. The bill would eventually become one third of Senate Bill 2.
Pro-abortion stalwarts were horrified over the bill which put forth these requirements:
Texas Senate Bill 5 is a list of measures that would amend and and add to abortion regulations in Texas. These measures include a ban on abortion at 20 weeks post-fertilization and recognize that the state has a compelling interest to protect fetuses from pain.
The bill would mandate that a doctor who performs abortions have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, and to require that clinics meet the same standards as other surgical health-care facilities in the state.
Another provision would require oversight of women taking abortion-inducing drugs such as RU-486. The bill would not apply to abortions necessary to save the mother’s life or to prevent permanent bodily damage from a pregnancy.
Despite Wendy Davis’ fashionable, feminist rhetoric, and catheter-assisted filibuster, the bill passed both houses overwhelmingly:
- The Texas House passed the bill on July 10, 2013, by a 96–49 margin
- The Texas Senate passed the bill on July 13, 2013 with a bipartisan vote with a 19-11 margin
Mainstream media abortion darling Davis then decided to run for governor of Texas in 2014, but was soundly defeated by Greg Abbott, 59-38%.
Pro-life proponents in America celebrated with the passage of SB2 (5) and with the Davis defeat: Texas was leading the nation in regaining the moral high ground on the issue of life. After all, Roe began it all in Texas with the Burger Court deciding a woman’s right to privacy trumped her unborn child’s right to life.
The U.S. Supreme Court, with that unprecedented ruling in Roe v. Wade, suddenly reversed the history of our nation, founded on the inalienable (God-given) rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Departing our biblical moorings, that 1973 SCOTUS found:
With a majority vote of 7-2, SCOTUS voted to strike down the Texas law which held abortion, for any reason other than rape or incest, to be illegal.
The court ruled:
The right to privacy was broad enough to “encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”
The question of “whether a fetus can enjoy Constitutional protection is separate from the notion of when life begins,” was not resolved by the court.
And the justices responsible for dooming 57+ million babies in the next 43 years:
The Supreme Court members who decided Roe v. Wade:
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger
Justice William O. Douglas
Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.
Justice Potter Stewart
Justice Byron White
Justice Thurgood Marshall
Justice Harry Blackmun
Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
Justice William RehnquistJustices Byron White (John F. Kennedy) and William Rehnquist (one of Nixon’s new appointees) dissented.
Now, 43 years later, the CJ Roberts’ court, in a 5 – 3 decision, has overturned the Texas SB 2, ousting Federalism and upholding judicial tyranny. The Founders intended, if judged by their writings, the Judicial branch to be the weakest of the three branches. But not so the enlightened secular humanists, the radical pro-aborts, the Progressives of the 2016.
As elucidated by Dr. Robert E. Moffit:
Federalism is at the heart of American constitutional government. The U.S. Constitution, centered on the division of power between the national and state governments, simultaneously unites Americans as a national whole while protecting their freedoms as the citizens of particular states.
During the Civil War, Orestes Augustus Brownson, one of America’s premier political theorists, urged his fellow citizens to rededicate themselves to the federal Constitution when the American Republic was threatened by national dissolution.
With the Republic today threatened by a relentless centralization of arbitrary and intrusive national power, Brownson’s admonitions are newly relevant. Federalism is the central mechanism for preserving ordered liberty, which remains America’s greatest legacy.
The Chief Justice was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito in his dissent. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the ever-more left-leaning justice, was the swing vote that joined the liberal justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Any American who reveres life as God-given must find this SCOTUS ruling repugnant. Texas voted to protect the unborn from pain, to protect women from unsterile and unsafe abortion clinics and providers; the U.S. Supreme Court has reversed those protections in favor of the radicals who would prefer convenience and licentiousness and murder.
As Justice Byron White wrote in his 1973 dissent:
I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment.
The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes.
. . .
As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.
Now the Roberts’ Court, in the tradition of the Burger Court, has once again ruled with “an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.”
Indeed, we are warned in the very scriptures that informed our Founders’ (even the supposed non-religious Jefferson) worldviews:
This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.
With this ruling Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg bolster an increasingly formidable culture of death: the five justices, playing God, have found that the abortionist’s rights trump the unborn baby’s right to life.
That’s a hellish ruling, with eternal consequences, and every Bible-believing Christian in America should be sickened, grieving, and resisting.
And with this ruling, Americans must acknowledge the absolutely critical nature of Election 2016: our next president will likely put forth one to three U.S. Supreme Court nominees, either securing this rampant judicial tyranny for generations, or returning us to a balance of powers and a respect of our Constitution and its biblical foundation.
We must vote with these ancient words appealing to our hearts: “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.”
First published at SavingOurFuture.com
Image credit: Shutterstock.