Reversing the 49-year-old decision legalizing abortion is an “act of violence” that “will kill and subjugate women,” usher in fascism, and overturn the “sacred” right to an abortion, which “all basic, mainstream religions” embraced, according to liberal commentators reacting to a leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. Here are some of the most over-the-top meltdowns about the possibility that the justices will overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Overturning Roe ‘will kill and subjugate women’
Pro-life jurisprudence kills, warned numerous people, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. While reading the draft opinion on Monday evening, Clinton wrote on Twitter: “This decision is a direct assault on the dignity, rights, & lives of women, not to mention decades of settled law. It will kill and subjugate women even as a vast majority of Americans think abortion should be legal. What an utter disgrace.”
Not surprising. But still outrageous.
This decision is a direct assault on the dignity, rights, & lives of women, not to mention decades of settled law. It will kill and subjugate women even as a vast majority of Americans think abortion should be legal. What an utter disgrace. https://t.co/TNo1IX3Tl4
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 3, 2022
Others sounded similar themes. “The overturning of Roe V Wade is a political act of violence against us and we will not accept it,” tweeted actress Amber Tamblyn.
On “The View” Tuesday, co-host Whoopi Goldberg said she “got tired of tripping over women in bathrooms, public bathrooms, who were giving themselves abortions because there was nowhere safe, nowhere clean, nowhere to go.”
In reality, claims of widespread deaths from “back-alley abortions” came from … the people performing illegal, back-alley abortions. The late Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a onetime abortionist and director of the antecedent group to today’s NARAL who later became pro-life, admitted during his efforts to overturn pro-life laws before the Supreme Court decision:
[W]e generally emphasized the frame of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always ‘5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.’ I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the ‘morality’ of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?
The actual number of women who died from illegal abortion in 1972, the year before Roe, was 39.
Furthermore, decriminalizing (and sometimes, subsidizing) abortion has not stopped women from dying from “safe and legal” abortions. “In 2018, the most recent year for which … data were reviewed for pregnancy-related deaths, two women died as a result of complications from legal induced abortion,” the CDC reported.
The decision says ‘women are not full human beings’
CNN commentator Kirsten Powers lectured, “It is fine to be pro-life. Be pro-life; don’t have an abortion. “It is not fine to say that women are not full human beings, people. They’re so obsessed with how a fetus or an embryo is a person. Well, guess what? Women are people.”
But if unborn children are also persons, shouldn’t the law protect their unalienable right to life? The author of Roe v. Wade thought so. “If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [Fourteenth] Amendment,” wrote Justice Harry Blackmun in Roe.
CNN analyst (not scientist) Kirsten Powers:
“It is not fine to say that women are not full human beings, people. They’re so obsessed with how a fetus or an embryo is a person. Well, guess what? Women are people!” Unborn babies are not…
. pic.twitter.com/AFmmBKK7oS— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) May 3, 2022
Roe v. Wade expresses the view of all ‘mainstream religions’
President Joe Biden claimed on Tuesday that the Supreme Court had somehow synthesized and distilled the timeless teachings of all great religious figures — Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, and Buddha — in affirming the right to abortion on demand. “Roe says what all basic, mainstream religions have historically concluded: that the right, that the existence of a human life and being is a question,” he said. “Is it at the moment of conception? Is it six months? Is it six weeks? Is it quickening, as [Thomas] Aquinas argued?”
BIDEN: “Roe says what all basic, mainstream religions have historically concluded, that the existence of a human life and being is a question.”pic.twitter.com/cma2sq1nyg
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) May 3, 2022
In fact, Christianity has always opposed abortion from its very earliest days. The earliest post-scriptural document still surviving, the Didache, ranks abortion with pederasty and witchcraft. While some theologians believed life began at the moment the child began to move, known colloquially as “the quickening,” the fourth-century theologian Basil the Great wrote: “The woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. The hair-splitting difference between formed and unformed makes no difference to us.”
Whatever any faith tradition may state, science affirms that life begins at conception.
‘Abortion is sacred.’
Some liberals went further, seeking to sanctify the act of abortion itself. “Let’s be clear: The right to an abortion is sacred,” said Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic hopeful for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. He then asked his followers to personally donate to one of the many state abortion funds, organizations that help underwrite (but do not pay for the full cost of) elective abortions.
Fetterman was not the only Democrat to use sacrilegious language to describe abortion on demand. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) tweeted, “The Republican-appointed Justices’ reported votes to overturn Roe v. Wade would go down as an abomination, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history.”
The speaker, who calls herself “an ardent, practicing Catholic,” previously called abortion “sacred ground,” while other Democrats described pro-life protections as “an abomination.” (For much of Western history, the term “abomination” indicated something offensive to God.)
Several of these conservative Justices, who are in no way accountable to the American people, have lied to the U.S. Senate, ripped up the Constitution and defiled both precedent and the Supreme Court’s reputation.
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) May 3, 2022
Pro-life advocate Obianuju Ekeocha, who founded Culture of Life Africa, responded to Fetterman’s statement by saying: “Dear friends, if you ever thought that abortion is just a political issue, think again. This is a battle with the realms of hell.”
John says👉🏾 “The right to an abortion is sacred.”
Dear friends, if you ever thought that abortion is just a political issue, think again. This is a battle with the realms of hell. https://t.co/SgTvK2xn8m pic.twitter.com/Ww1XXOPjmd
— Obianuju Ekeocha (@obianuju) May 3, 2022
Republicans ‘want to ban interracial marriage’ and civil rights laws
Several commenters saw the draft opinion as part of a slippery slope toward segregation.
“The Republicans won’t stop with banning abortion. They want to ban interracial marriage,” asserted Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) without proof. “Do you want to save that? Well, then you should probably vote.”
Similarly, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted, “As we’ve warned, SCOTUS isn’t just coming for abortion – they’re coming for the right to privacy Roe rests on, which includes gay marriage + civil rights.”
The Republicans won’t stop with banning abortion. They want to ban interracial marriage. Do you want to save that? Well, then you should probably vote. https://t.co/MRytdsjUBP
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) May 3, 2022
AOC seemed not to understand that civil rights rest on the 1964 and 1968 Civil Rights acts. Since both bills passed Congress through the democratic process, rather than by the whim of a Supreme Court majority, they do not rely solely on the court for their continued existence.
As we’ve warned, SCOTUS isn’t just coming for abortion – they’re coming for the right to privacy Roe rests on, which includes gay marriage + civil rights.
Manchin is blocking Congress codifying Roe. House has seemingly forgotten about Clarence Thomas. These 2 points must change https://t.co/5Isec0osV0
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 3, 2022
A pro-life court is ‘an illegitimate court’
Others believed American institutions were losing their grasp on legitimacy.
“Overall, what does this story mean for the Supreme Court?” asked Mika Brzezinski on Tuesday’s “Morning Joe.”
“For the Supreme Court, in a word, illegitimacy,” answered MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who denounced Justice Samuel Alito’s ruling as “an illegitimate decision by an illegitimate court.” He asserted that his views on the Court’s legitimacy represent “the perception for 70% of Americans.”
As noted before, Russian propaganda aims to have Americans view their government and public institutions as lacking legitimacy. FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress that “hostile foreign actors” conduct “disinformation campaigns” designed to “undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and values.” Similarly, former government intelligence analyst Clint Watts told NPR in 2018 that Russian propaganda plots “to make Americans lose confidence in democratic institutions and elected officials by turning every crack in our country into a chasm,” including “abortion rights.”
Scarborough, who spent four years accusing his opponents of advancing Russian intelligence goals, appears to have done their bidding over Roe v. Wade.
A ‘nightmare scenario’ and threat to democracy
Yet MSNBC continued to warn the Supreme Court that overturning Roe, and returning the issue of abortion to state voters, would upend democracy.
Allowing voters to have a say in abortion represents a “nightmare scenario,” said MSNBC contributor and former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham on “Morning Joe” Tuesday. “If the Court were to go this far, you will have, as you were just saying, an extraordinary number of Americans believing that the system, in fact, cannot, is not capable of delivering justice, is not capable of reflecting the popular will, even through the constitutional prism.”
That raises “one of the great questions of the era, the great question of the era,” he said: “Are you and I, are we, in this decade, are we up to democracy? Are we commensurate to the task? And, I’m worried that we’re entering the darkest period of that test.”
Scarborough also stated that, while “the court’s always been guided by the law, but it’s also been keenly aware that it is the only unelected branch of American government. They needed to not appear to be openly contemptuous of public opinion.”
Of course, the Supreme Court is supposed to decide whether laws comport with the U.S. Constitution, as understood through the original intent of its framers. They are not to reflect the “popular will”; one of the reasons the Founding Fathers had justices appointed for life, according to Federalist No. 78, was to remove their decisions from popular pressure.
Unquestionably, the Supreme Court’s most controversial landmark decisions openly mocked public opinion. In 1969, only 40% of Americans believed abortion should be legal during the first trimester of pregnancy. Similarly, a month after the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision which created a newfound constitutional right to same-sex marital unions, only 42% of Americans supported redefining marriage. Scarborough and company did not rebuke the court in 2015.
Celebrities say the decision is the first stage of American fascism
Others believed the downward slide would sweep past segregation and foment the nation’s implosion into full-blown fascism. Former “Star Trek” cast member George Takei seemed to riff on Pastor Martin Niemöller’s overused statement about Nazi Germany: “First they came for Black voters, then they targeted LGBTQ+ families. Now, women of America,” the former Sulu actor posted on social media. He told his Twitter followers to “[t]ake to the streets.”
“I see fascism down the line here,” agreed Joy Behar on Tuesday’s episode of “The View.”
Behar then claims the conservative justices will go after Brown v. Board and take away the right to vote.
“I see fascism down the line here,” she insisted. pic.twitter.com/GqO9rZuSsQ— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) May 3, 2022
‘I want to cry,’ he said
Most on the lachrymose Left greeted the draft decision with emotion, rather than reason, as proven on Tuesday morning when MSNBC’s Willie Geist asked a former Obama administration official for his reaction. “You’ve slept on this. You’ve read through most of the opinion, or the draft opinion,” he said. “What is your first blush reaction, first to the substance of it, and second to this leak?”
“Honestly, I want to cry. You know, I want to cry in so many different ways,” replied Neal Katyal, the acting solicitor general in the Obama administration and a former aide to future-Justice Elena Kagan.
Pregnancies will ‘turn into children’
While Democrats accuse Republicans of waging “a war on science,” they seem to have little concern for embryology or basic biology when it comes to abortion. Yamiche Alcindor told “MTP Daily” on Tuesday that “women will be forced to have … pregnancies that will then turn into children.”
“You lay out the real-world impact so well, Yamiche,” said guest host Kristen Welker.
Of course, women are pregnant with children; pregnancies do not become children.
Yamiche Alcindor is worried that “women who are poor, women of color…will be forced to have pregnancies that they cannot afford to terminate, and pregnancies that will then turn into children.” pic.twitter.com/oqhd1vD11y
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) May 3, 2022
All of this overlooks what actually happens if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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