Justice Aborted

New laws turn their back on the unborn. What is behind the new laws and the new fights over abortion?

Many people around the country were shocked by the news on January 22, 2019 That fateful day was the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion in all 50 states. But in 2019, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo took abortion rights to an all-new low.

That’s the day Governor Cuomo signed a bill into law establishing broad protections to the right to abortion. The new law:

• Removed the unborn from all considerations in criminal prosecutions

• Eased restrictions on who was allowed to perform abortions to include nurse practitioners and registered nurses in certain situations

• Protected abortion access into the third trimester up to birth.

New York wasn’t the only state to pass such legislation. Virginia, Vermont, and Illinois quickly began the process of passing similar legislation in the days following. Virginia Governor Ralph Northum defended a Virginia State representative’s proposed bill to protect abortion up to and during child birth. He suggested that if a child was born alive during an abortion, then the doctors would make the child comfortable – usually understood as placing the dying child in a warming blanket – while they had a conversation with the mother about what to do from there. Presumably the conversation would be about whether to allow the child to die of neglect.

But why was there so much action in state legislatures around abortion. Did all of this come out of nowhere? Abortion supporters are afraid Roe v. Wade might be overturned. President Donald Trump has appointed two Supreme Court justices. Neal Gorsuch filled the seat vacated by the death of Antonin Scalia, and Brett Kavanaugh filled the vacancy left when Anthony Kennedy retired. Anthony Kennedy’s seat, as the swing vote between the four conservatives (Roberts, Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas) and the four progressives (Ginsberg, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Breyer) was the most powerful seat in government. It is clear that there are efforts from the left to woo Chief Justice Roberts to fill the Kennedy position of moderating the court. Failing to do so leaves Roe/Doe/Casey vulnerable in a manner it has not been in nearly 30 years.

However, overturning Roe does not mean abortion becomes illegal. It simply means that abortion laws return to the states to decide abortion law for themselves. If that happens, there will be no unified approach to abortion throughout the United States. Facing the real possibility of an America without Roe, the states wishing to protect access to abortion, as it currently exists, are scrambling to put the legal structure in place.

This creates the rare opportunity to force them to defend the letter of the law. We can’t be squeamish now. We cannot be polite now. In this moment we must confront the ugliness of abortion without apology. The more people know about abortion, the more they tend to favor laws restricting it.

Jay Watts is the president of Merely Human Ministries, Inc. He is also a speaker and writer, with a focus on pro-life issues, as well as euthanasia, apologetics, and philosophy.