Up until the US Supreme Court’s 1973 decisions of Roe v. Wade (which legalized abortion up to the point of viability) and Doe v. Bolton (which effectively legalized it after viability), all of those state legislatures would have have the power to decide – the progressive states such as New York or Rhode Island could have abortion on demand, and the conservative states such as Mississippi or Louisiana could have restricted the practice. Those freedoms ended when the Court effectively federalized the issue, and over 50 million aborted babies later, the issue is no less emotional, passionate and intense than it was 46 years ago. The 1973 Court may have hoped that by deciding in favor of abortion, the issue would be unchallengeable and thus less politically charged. However, the issue of abortion, more it seems than any other twenty issues combined, has turned each US Judicial nomination into a potential battleground, and has sharpened the partisanship and anger in Congress, the Courts, and America. The political left has opposed any restriction on abortion and has sought to pass laws that secure the practice; and the political right has opposed any extension of abortion, and has sought to pass laws to limit abortion; and each side fights tooth and nail for or against court nominees based on their opinion on abortion, or their likelihood of overturning Roe or Doe.
The heartbeat bills have been termed unconstitutional by some state courts, but the issue has not yet come before the US Supreme Court. Interestingly, the plaintiffs in the original cases, “Roe” – Norma McCorvey; and “Doe” – Sandra Cano; each said that the circumstances of their cases, as argued before the Supreme Court, were not factual as presented, and both became pro-life activists. Generally speaking, when the fundamental facts of a case argued in court are later found to be different than what was originally presented, the decision is revisited or perhaps overturned, but evidently that does not apply to pro-abortion decisions.
Anyway, Hollywood is especially upset over the Georgia law, and many of Tinseltown’s more prominent liberal voices have declared a boycott of the state, hoping to crush its burgeoning industry as a location for filming. As we have stated before, it is one thing to object to a law; it is something else entirely to attempt to coerce or extort places whose legislatures have passed it. But, it worked in North Carolina, where the “bathroom” bill cost the state things such as travel by employees from certain other states; the hosting of sports playoffs and championships; and lawsuits, lawsuits, lawsuits. So much for tolerance of other ideas or the right to hold one’s own opinion.
The hard-core pro-abortion activists, of the type who falsified the stories of Ms. Roe and Ms. Doe, have always contended that what is contained in the womb is not a baby. They likewise falsify the identity of what is being aborted – it is “a mass of cells,” or “the product of conception,” or “fetal tissue” or some similar euphemism – anything but a human life. They strenuously oppose bills that mandate ultrasounds or heartbeats, because those technologies prove that what is in the womb is more than a “lump of undifferentiated tissue.” They prove that it is alive, and that it is human, and the activists are afraid those technologies will make abortion much tougher to defend or to justify, and that is why they fight so hard against heartbeat bills. The opinions of certain judges to the contrary, we find it impossible to believe that the Founding Fathers would have considered it “unconstitutional” for states to seek to restrict or regulate abortion.