Today, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the United States Supreme Court finally abandoned its lawless 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. The Roe court had found a constitutional right to abortion, meaning that the states—which under the U.S. Constitution have the general police power, which is the power to regulate health, safety, and morals—could no longer prohibit abortion.
There was never any constitutional basis for the 1973 decision. The court held that there was a general right of privacy “emanating from the penumbra” of the constitutional amendments, and that this fictitious “right of privacy” protected a woman’s choice to terminate her pregnancy. While privacy is a value in the constitution, as per the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures, there is no general “right of privacy.” Moreover, abortion is not a private act. It is a commercial act in which a woman pays a practitioner to destroy her child in the womb. If a right of privacy could prevent abortion from being proscribed, then obviously it would also prevent the outlawing of prostitution, another commercial act generally performed in private.
There was never much pretense that Roe v. Wade was anything other than an exercise of raw judicial power, judicial lawlessness, or, to put it more bluntly, judicial thuggery.
What the Dobbs Decision Does, and Does Not, Do
Today’s decision does not outlaw abortion. What it does is return to the states their rightful jurisdiction over health, safety, and morals. States may outlaw abortion, or not. The pattern that will emerge is that conservative states will place restrictions on abortion, especially late-term abortions—the Mississippi law at issue in Dobbs allowed abortion until 15 weeks, which is almost four months—but Leftist states like California and New York will continue to allow abortions through full term and beyond, into infanticide.
Likewise, the Dobbs decision does not overturn Obergefell, the Supreme Court decision from 2015 requiring the states to allow same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage will continue to be mandated by the Obergefell decision.
However, we would be remiss not to note that Obergefell was based upon exactly the same type of judicial thuggery that Roe was based upon. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were enacted after the Civil War to secure the rights of the freed slaves to equal protection under the laws, the same laws that applied to whites, and to eliminate race-based laws and codes that applied only to the freed slaves. To argue that a 14th Amendment intended to secure the freed slaves equal protection under the laws was ever intended to change the eternal definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman is absurd. It is yet more judicial activism, i.e., lawlessness and thuggery.
Who We should Thank for This
The fact that we again live under a constitution that does not require the unlimited slaughter of the unborn is thanks largely to Donald John Trump, who kept his campaign promise—as he kept most of his campaign promises—to appoint conservative jurists to the federal judiciary, jurists who would respect the constitution and laws as written, not make up out of whole cloth outcomes like Roe and Obergefell. He appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, Neal Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett who, along with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito (appointed by Bush the elder and Bush the younger, respectively), formed the majority to jettison Roe. Trump’s court selections have today been vindicated (as has my laudatory article about Barrett written when she was nominated), as have those who, not fully trusting Trump’s relatively newfound conservatism, voted for him anyway.
We have also to thank the five conservative justices who stood by their initial decision after the draft opinion was leaked, in the face of enormous pressure, including credible death threats. These are brave men, and a brave woman, and they deserve our thanks and praise for their courage, commitment to law and right principles of jurisprudence, and their refusal to back down in the face of an outrageous campaign of intimidation that was orchestrated by the Left and implemented by the Democratic Party at the highest level.
Those who today need to do some real soul-searching are the “conservative” Never-Trumpers—mostly “conservative” pundits like those at National Review (the great William F. Buckley, Jr., is probably spinning in his grave) and its numerous imitators who sprang up because of cheap Internet publishing—and also the “conservative” (but Wall Street funded) think-tank establishment, e.g., the Heritage Foundation. These folks claim to have said “never Trump” because of his personal demeanor and his “mean tweets,” but they aren’t that stupid. They really hated Trump because Trump lambasted the bipartisan, Wall Street funded and imposed “consensus” that our borders must be wide open and our manufacturing must be outsourced to China, a “consensus” they had played an ideological, intellectual role in establishing. These people have been exposed as the frauds they are. They were always wrong about Trump and they continue to be controlled opposition, playing their pathetic role in the dissolution of our republic.
The Left’s Campaign of Intimidation Failed
Two months ago, something that had never happened occurred: Samuel Alito’s draft opinion was leaked to the public. It is impossible to overemphasize how destructive to the functioning of the court this act of betrayal was. It was intended to subject the five justices in the majority to extreme pressure, including threats of violence, to abandon their initial votes to overturn Roe.
And just as the Leftist activist who leaked the draft opinion intended, the justices were subjected to enormous pressure for two months to change their votes. There were screaming demonstrations outside the private residences of the justices, particularly the youngest justices, Kavanaugh and Barrett, who still have children living at home with them.
This exact conduct is explicitly made illegal—criminal—under 18 U.S.C § 1507, which is plain enough to be understood by any literate person:
“Whoever, with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty, pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States, or in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer, or with such intent uses any sound-truck or similar device or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”
Those of you who have followed the news from America for the last two years will not be surprised to learn that no one has been prosecuted under this statute.
The Marxist Revolution sweeping the country has created a sort of legal twilight zone in which the institutions of the federal government, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), are controlled by the Revolution and used only to further the Revolution. Hence, when a conservative does something that might or might not be illegal, he is prosecuted to the full extent of the law: early morning SWAT team raids by black-clad, AK-toting, masked federal agents in full body armor, detention without bond for years on end, every humiliation they can think of, then aggressive prosecution under novel, questionable theories of law dreamed up by the likes of Andrew Weissmann.
But when Leftists activists demonstrate loudly and in force outside the home of a justice of the Supreme Court with the obvious intent of terrorizing that justice into changing her vote—crickets. Nothing. No morning SWAT team raids, no handcuffs and leg irons, no pre-trial detention without bond in solitary confinement. The Leftist garbage running the DOJ and the FBI have reserved those methods of torture exclusively for enemies of the Revolution, like the January 6 defendants, Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, and Jeff Clark.
There was a planned and partially executed attempt on Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s life. A man named Nicholas John Roske traveled from California to Maryland and showed up near Kavanaugh’s home during the early morning hours of June 8, armed with a knife, a pistol, ammunition, zip ties, pepper spray, duct tape, and other items he was intending to use to kill Kavanaugh and his family. Roske then changed his mind, called the authorities, and turned himself in.
Even before this incident, Congress decided to fund greater security for the Supreme Court justices, but Nancy Pelosi halted that legislation for a month while the tension and the demonstrations outside the justices homes reached a boiling point. Pelosi clearly wanted the justices to be vulnerable to assassination attempts, and more importantly to know that they were vulnerable to assassination attempts.
Alarmingly, the Democratic Party is increasingly run by the utopian Left, and has adopted revolutionary leftist ethics, which are summarized by the “the end justifies the means.” For the revolutionary, the utopia, the heaven on earth, that the revolution will usher in justifies anything—any lie, any crime, any murder, any mass murder, any genocide—that is necessary. History has verified this several times, with Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. The end justifies any enormity that the Left has convinced itself needs to be done to achieve the aims of the revolution.
So if, in order to preserve the legal regime that has slaughtered 75 million unborn children since 1973, it is necessary to destroy the institution of the Supreme Court—leak a draft opinion, terrorize the justices at their homes, prevent their security from being upgraded, pack the court, etc.—then that is exactly what the Left will do.
Well, thank God the Left did not prevail in this case. God’s hand was visibly at work, in preventing the Dems from cheating hard enough in 2016 to deny Trump the presidency, in giving Trump the remarkable integrity to keep his promise to appoint conservative justices, and in giving the justices the steely resolve not to be terrorized into changing their votes. When asked whether, having appointed three conservative justices, he feels he played a role in the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Donald Trump was uncharacteristically humble, telling Fox News that "God made the decision."
Indeed, He did.
“At the sound of Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth’s child leaped within her, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” Luke 1:41.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Jer. 1:5