On Wednesday, December 1st, it was my privilege to speak on the plaza of the Supreme Court and to pray in thanksgiving for all your efforts on behalf of the unborn as the Justices of the Court discussed whether Roe vs. Wade and Planned Parenthood vs. Casey should be overturned.
On that day and the previous day I helped lead or participate in about a dozen events, and you can see some photos of them here.
On the 29th, the Washington Times published one of my op-eds about the case, both online and in print, and the next day, the National Catholic Register published commentary by our Executive Janet Morana on one of the key arguments in the case.
The Washington Examiner was also among numerous other outlets who interviewed me about the case.
One of the aspects of the oral arguments that it’s important to note is that the State of Mississippi and the Jackson abortion mill were not the only parties arguing. Someone else had requested – and was granted – time to argue before the Court for baby-killing and against Mississippi’s pro-life law.
It was the Biden Administration.
He sent his Solicitor General to argue that we should continue killing the unborn. Presidential Administrations can request time from the Court to argue on one side or another of these cases. President Trump, in fact, took advantage of that opportunity during his Administration to argue in front of the Court on the pro-life side.
In the case of Biden’s Solicitor General, I noticed that she called the so-called right to abortion “fundamental” more than once. But in that she got it wrong. The Court actually does not consider this right “fundamental” anymore. That was one of the ways in which Planned Parenthood vs. Casey modified Roe, by taking the abortion “right” down a notch, and expanding the ways that a state could regulate it.
The Biden Administration obviously has no regard for the people’s rights to craft policy on abortion, because one of the key problems this case points to is how the federal district court in Mississippi treated the Gestational Age Act which is under review here: they didn’t even consider, much less decide on, the weighty arguments the state made, with much evidence to accompany them, about the reasons for passing this law: the new knowledge we have about the humanity of the unborn, and about the harm abortion does to the health of woman and to the integrity of the medical profession.
They didn’t consider these things because of the special constitutional status abortion has. Biden’s Solicitor General argued that it should continue to have that special status. Meanwhile, the State of Mississippi, as well as hundreds of state and federal legislators who weighed in with the Court on Mississippi’s side, believe that the people should be able to craft policy on abortion through their elected representatives.
There’s much more to digest here.
Please read and study more about the arguments at www.SupremeCourtVictory.com, take part in our prayer campaign about it, and spread the word!
We’ll be back with much more analysis.
Fr. Frank Pavone
PS… By the way, did you realize that a week from today, that is, Monday, December 13th, is the 50-year anniversary of the oral arguments in Roe vs. Wade! Isn’t it amazing that the oral arguments in the Dobbs case came, almost to the day, 50 years after the oral arguments in the case it may well finally overturn!! You can listen to and read the Roe arguments here.
Read Part One of Fr. Frank's Assessment