Tag Archives: Roe vs Wade

Justice Kennedy, U.S. Supreme Court’s pivotal vote, to retire

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said on Wednesday he plans to retire after three decades as a pivotal vote on the highest U.S. judicial body, giving President Donald Trump an opportunity to make the court more firmly conservative.

The conservative Kennedy, who turns 82 in July and is the second-oldest justice on the nine-member court, has become one of the most consequential American jurists since joining the court in 1988 as an appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan. He proved instrumental in advancing gay rights, buttressing abortion rights and erasing political spending limits. His retirement takes effect on July 31, the court said.

“It has been the greatest honor and privilege to serve our nation in the federal judiciary for 43 years, 30 of those years on the Supreme Court,” Kennedy said in a statement.

The statement issued by the court said that Kennedy’s decision was motivated by his decision to spend more time with his family.

Kennedy is a traditional conservative who sometimes joined the liberal justices on key rulings, earning a reputation as the court’s “swing” vote who heartened conservatives and liberals alike, depending on the issue. Kennedy on Tuesday joined the court’s four other conservatives in giving Trump a huge legal victory by upholding the Republican president’s travel ban targeting people from several Muslim-majority countries.

Kennedy’s decision was disclosed on the final day of the court’s current term, which began in October. On Wednesday, he joined his fellow conservative justices in a 5-4 ruling that dealt a major setback to organized labor by shutting off a key union revenue source.

Trump on Wednesday said Kennedy had great vision and heart. The president said he will begin a search immediately for a new justice, with a list of 25 candidates. The Republican-led Senate can be expected to push to have the new nominee confirmed and on the court before the justices begin their next term in October.

Trump already has left an imprint on the court, restoring its 5-4 conservative majority with the appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch last year after the president’s fellow Republicans in the Senate in 2016 refused to consider Democratic former President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland.

While Kennedy’s replacement will not change the numerical ideological balance on the court, Trump could appoint a justice who would be more staunchly conservative than Kennedy and less likely to occasionally side with the court’s liberal wing.

MAJOR SOCIAL ISSUES

Without Kennedy on the bench, the high court could move to the right on major social issues including abortion and gay rights. Kennedy wrote the landmark 2015 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

Conservative activists have long dreamed of building a firmly conservative majority on the court that would push to overturn the landmark 1973 ruling in the case Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion nationwide.

Kennedy disappointed conservatives by joining Supreme Court decisions that affirmed the Roe decision, including a landmark 1992 ruling in the case Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Gorsuch already has demonstrated that he is one of the most conservative members of the court, aligning himself with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. [nL1N1OE2GT]

The U.S. Senate, which must confirm nominees before they can join the court, is controlled 51-49 by Trump’s fellow Republicans, meaning that if they remain unified they can overcome any Democratic opposition like that mounted against Gorsuch. Senate Republicans changed the chamber’s rules during the Gorsuch nomination battle to prevent Democrats from insisting on a 60-vote super-majority, allowing court nominees to win confirmation by a simple majority vote.

Kennedy personally delivered his retirement letter to the White House on Wednesday afternoon, after he told his fellow justices of his plans at their afternoon conference.

Trump picked Gorsuch from a list of names, mostly conservative federal appeals court judges, he circulated during his 2016 election campaign. The White House last November issued an expanded list that includes other prominent conservatives, including Judge Brett Kavanagh, a former Kennedy law clerk who serves on the U.S. appeals court in Washington.

While Kennedy sided with conservative colleagues on many issues and authored the landmark 2010 ruling that allowed unlimited corporate spending in political campaigns, his tenure also included strong support for the liberal cause of gay rights.

Kennedy, mild-mannered and professorial, followed a thoughtful, middle-of-the-road approach and often posed probing, intellectual questions of lawyers arguing cases. He became the swing vote on the ideologically divided court after fellow centrist conservative Justice Sandra Day O’Connor retired in 2006.

Kennedy was Reagan’s third choice to fill the court seat left open by the retirement of Lewis Powell in 1987. The Senate rejected Reagan’s first nominee, outspoken conservative Robert Bork, in a fierce partisan fight and second choice Douglas Ginsburg withdrew after admitting to past marijuana use.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Iowa passes ‘fetal heartbeat’ abortion ban, most restrictive in U.S.

Opponents of a California law, requiring anti-abortion pregnancy centers to post signs notifying women of the availability of state-funded contraception and abortion, hold a rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, U.S., March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Andrew Chung

By Barbara Goldberg

(Reuters) – Iowa’s Republican-controlled legislature passed the most restrictive abortion ban in the United States on Wednesday, outlawing the procedure after a fetal heartbeat is detected, often at six weeks and before a woman realizes she is pregnant.

The Senate voted 29-17 to pass the House of Representatives-approved bill, according to the legislature’s online voting tallies. The bill now goes to Republican Governor Kim Reynolds, an abortion opponent, who has not said publicly whether she will sign it into law.

The legislation is aimed at triggering a challenge to Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 landmark decision which established that women have a constitutional right to an abortion, activists on both sides of the issue said.

Abortion opponents aim to land abortion questions back in front of the nation’s top court, where they believe the 5-4 conservative majority could sharply curtail abortion access or ban it outright.

“We created an opportunity to take a run at Roe v. Wade – 100 percent,” said Republican state Senator Rick Bertrand of Sioux City, who said the legislation is designed to be “thrust into the court” that has become more conservative following President Donald Trump’s appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Spokeswoman Becca Lee of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, which supports access to abortion, called it an “intentionally unconstitutional ban on 99 percent of safe, legal abortion, designed to challenge Roe v. Wade.”

“The bill weaponizes fetal heartbeat, which is by all accounts an arbitrary standard that bans abortion long before the point of fetal viability,” Lee said in an email to Reuters.

Mississippi’s Republican governor in March signed into law a bill banning abortion after 15 weeks with some exceptions, sparking an immediate court challenge by abortion rights advocates.

A similar court challenge is underway in Kentucky, which in April enacted a ban on a common abortion procedure from the 11th week of pregnancy.

The newest Iowa bill, which the state Senate passed early Wednesday after overnight wrangling by lawmakers, requires any woman seeking an abortion to undergo an abdominal ultrasound to screen for a fetal heartbeat. If one is detected, healthcare providers are barred from performing an abortion.

Among the few exceptions are if the woman was raped or a victim of incest and has reported that to authorities.

The bill would ban most abortions in the state and was passed in the final days of the Iowa legislative session.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York; editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)

Note from Editor:  Links to our shows with  Janet Porter and Congressman Tom DeLay.

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Heartbeats, the miracle of Life 

Trump decries ‘permissive’ U.S. abortion laws at rally

Participants attend the annual March for Life anti-abortion rally in front of the Washington Monument in Washington, U.S. January 19, 2017.

By Ian Simpson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump criticized U.S. abortion laws as among the most permissive in the world in a speech to anti-abortion activists at the annual March for Life on Friday, and pledged his administration would always defend “the right to life.”

The Republican president’s speech, relayed via video link from the White House Rose Garden to thousands gathered on Washington’s National Mall, highlighted his shift in recent years from a supporter of women’s access to abortion to a powerful opponent.

“As you all know, Roe v. Wade has resulted in some of the most permissive abortion laws anywhere in the world,” he said, criticizing the 1973 Supreme Court decision that affirmed a woman’s right to an abortion at most stages of a pregnancy.

Trump said the United States “is one of only seven countries to allow elective late-term abortions,” mentioning China and North Korea. “It is wrong. It has to change.”

The other countries that allow elective abortions after 20 weeks are Canada, the Netherlands, Singapore and Vietnam, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, an anti-abortion research group.

Trump listed some anti-abortion measures his administration had taken, including an announcement March for Lifeearlier in the day by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The agency said it was revoking Obama administration legal guidance that had sought to discourage states from trying to defund organizations that provide abortion services, such as Planned Parenthood.

Roe v. Wade effectively legalized abortion nationwide. In the 45 years since the decision was issued on Jan. 22, 1973, the March for Life has been staged near the ruling’s anniversary in protest.

“Because of you, tens of thousands of Americans have been born and reached their full, God-given potential,” Trump, a Christian, told the marchers, who included many groups of students from Roman Catholic schools.

Trump has pledged to appoint more federal judges who oppose abortion with the hope that the ruling might eventually be overturned.

Trump is the third sitting president to address the march: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both made supportive remarks to the march at least twice each during their presidencies, speaking via telephone broadcast by loudspeakers.

Trump sent Vice President Mike Pence, a vocal abortion opponent, to speak at last year’s march, a few days after the presidential inauguration. This year, Pence introduced Trump, saying the president would “restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law.”

Many marchers, carrying signs with slogans such as “Pray to end abortion,” said they were excited to hear from a president they see as an ally, but hesitated to point to any specific advancements in their agenda from Trump’s first year in office.

“It’s so refreshing to have a standing president who supports pro-life,” Tim Curran, a 66-year-old grocer who had traveled to the march from Kentucky, said before the remarks and the march to the steps of the Supreme Court for a rally. “He seems to be moving us back in the direction of traditional families and morality.”

U.S. President Donald Trump greets a young girl among families gathered in the White House Rose Garden as he addresses the annual March for Life rally, taking place on the nearby National Mall in Washington, U.S., January 19, 2018.

U.S. President Donald Trump greets a young girl among families gathered in the White House Rose Garden as he addresses the annual March for Life rally, taking place on the nearby National Mall in Washington, U.S., January 19, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The event came a day before the first anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, a milestone to be marked by the second Women’s March in cities across the United States, including Washington. Organizers hope to recreate last year’s huge anti-Trump protests by hundreds of thousands of people who saw Trump as a foe of women’s rights and reproductive freedom.

Trump previously supported women’s access to abortion, saying in an interview in 1999, when he was still a celebrity real-estate tycoon in New York City, that while he “hated the concept of abortion,” he was “very pro-choice.”

As a candidate for the presidency in 2016, Trump said his position had “evolved,” describing himself as “pro-life with exceptions,” such as in cases of rape or incest.

Trump has said he hopes Roe v. Wade will eventually be overturned and that each state will instead be allowed to decide whether to ban it.

Americans tend to split roughly down the middle on abortion access, with 49 percent saying they supported it and 46 percent saying they opposed it in a 2017 Gallup poll.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington and Jonathan Allen in New York; Writing by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Jonathan Oatis)

Norma McCorvey, from Roe to Pro Life, a journey of restoration

Norma McCorvey, the anonymous plaintiff known as Jane Roe in the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling legalizing abortion in the United States, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee along with Sandra Cano of Atlanta, Georgia, the "Doe" in the Doe v. Bolton Supreme Court case, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, U.S. on June 23, 2005.

By Kami Klein

Norma McCorvey has been known over the past 4 decades as the anonymous plaintiff  Roe, in the deeply controversial Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade.  The year was 1973 when the highest Court held that a woman’s right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision gave a woman a right to abortion during the entirety of the pregnancy and defined different levels of state interest for regulating abortion in the second and third trimesters. From that moment to now, over 59,115,995 children have been aborted in the United States.

The journey of Norma McCorvey ended with her death on February 18th, 2017 but the divide between Pro-Choice and Pro-Life has moved no closer to resolution.  The rights of the unborn were not even a part of the lawsuit when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and the pro-life movement has been attempting to have those voices heard ever since.

Norma, interestingly enough, never had an abortion.  She never attended a single trial nor did she give a deposition.  She signed documents only once after failing to get an illegal abortion in which she actually went to term with the child later giving the baby up for adoption. In later years, she described herself as a “pawn” in the fight to legalize abortion.

McCorvey came forth about her part in Roe v. Wade when court documents were released, and she became the poster child of the pro-choice movement, working for abortion clinics and protesting against the pro-life message.  Her life had been battered from the beginning, but it was only when she became a Christian that she understood the full and tragic impact of Roe v. Wade.

In her book, Won By Love, she wrote:

“I was sitting in O.R.’s offices when I noticed a fetal development poster. The progression was so obvious, the eyes were so sweet. It hurt my heart, just looking at them. I ran outside and finally, it dawned on me. ‘Norma’, I said to myself, ‘They’re right’. I had worked with pregnant women for years. I had been through three pregnancies and deliveries myself. I should have known. Yet something in that poster made me lose my breath. I kept seeing the picture of that tiny, 10-week-old embryo , and I said to myself, that’s a baby! It’s as if blinders just fell off my eyes and I suddenly understood the truth—that’s a baby!

I felt crushed under the truth of this realization. I had to face up to the awful reality. Abortion wasn’t about ‘products of conception’. It wasn’t about ‘missed periods’. It was about children being killed in their mother’s wombs. All those years I was wrong. Signing that affidavit, I was wrong. Working in an abortion clinic, I was wrong. No more of this first trimester, second trimester, third trimester stuff. Abortion—at any point—was wrong. It was so clear. Painfully clear.”

Charisma magazine has written a powerful testimony of Norma’s path to God in the article, Norma McCorvey’s First Church Experience as a Believer where not only did Norma experience the love and forgiveness of Jesus, she also experienced the love and forgiveness of the body of Christ—the church.

Join Jim and Lori Bakker on The Jim Bakker Show beginning March 3rd as the Bakkers welcome Rabbi Jonathan Cahn and Mikel French to the show where they will be discussing the inauguration, the future of Roe v. Wade and the inspirational story of Lori Bakker’s God-destined meeting with Norma and the time they spent together.  

Norma’s life has been told from every angle.  She had been called names from all sides and struggled daily to discover for herself who she was. It was through Christ that she finally discovered the truth.

Norma McCorvey was and IS, simply and wonderfully, a child of God.

 

additional sources: Roe vs Wade fast facts, Norma McCorvey, ‘Roe’ in Roe v Wade, is Dead at 69, Norma McCorvey ‘Roe’ in Roe v Wade case legalizing abortion dies aged 69, U.S. abortion statistics by Year (1973-Current), Wikipedia – Norma McCorvey