About That Ciivil War..

Jennifer Rubin’s column on the leak of Alito’s “slash and burn” opinion pretty much summed up where we are: she pointed out that

unelected justices — in some cases appointed by presidents who lacked a popular-vote majority and confirmed by senators who did not represent a majority of the country — would bring to head a battle between a fading racial, religious and political minority and an increasingly diverse, secular country.

Rubin is not the only pundit pointing to the implications of the leaked analysis: this isn’t simply an attack on Roe, or on the right to abortion. This is the culmination of a 50-year effort to reverse the jurisprudence of substantive due process.

As I used to explain to my students, in American law, there are two kinds of due process: procedural and substantive. Procedural due process is–as the name implies–concerned with the fundamental fairness of the legal process. Did an accused person get a fair trial? If the matter was civil, rather than criminal, was the government procedure properly respectful of the individual’s liberty interests and property rights?

Substantive due process, as the name implies, is concern for the substance of a proposed law or government action. Is this an area where government regulation or action is appropriate, or is this a matter that must be left up to the individual to determine?

In other words, in this particular instance, who gets to decide? Government or the individual involved?  The question is not: what should the decision be? The question is: who gets to make the decision?

Ever since the Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that the legislature had no business deciding whether married couples could use birth control, the doctrine of substantive due process has been applied to limit state intrusion into what the Court has called “intimate decisions.” Those “intimate decisions” include whether and when to have children, who to marry, whether to have consensual sexual relations, and many other choices that contemporary citizens believe are simply none of government’s business.

Alito’s sneering draft sweeps away that distinction. He hands over to state legislatures the authority to invade the most personal and private areas of individual lives, and to decree how those “intimate” lives should be led.

Make no mistake: eviscerating the doctrine of substantive due process, which is what this decision would begin to do, would return the U.S. to a pre-modern version of state authority–to a time when government had the right to impose the religious beliefs of those in power on citizens who do not share those beliefs.

If the leaked draft represents the Court’s ultimate, official decision, it will generate a civil war between the minority of Americans who want to turn back the clock to a time when church and state were joined in authority over citizens’ most personal decisions, and the rest of us.

Why do I characterize what’s coming as “civil war”?

Over the past 50 years, Americans (and for that matter, citizens of other Western democracies) have become accustomed to a legal system that draws a line between permissible and impermissible government actions. We have become accustomed to a culture in which we are entitled to a degree of personal autonomy, to control of the most meaningful, personal aspects of our own lives. In the U.S., polling repeatedly shows that large majorities believe that a woman should be able to control her own body and make her own reproductive decisions, that people of the same sex or different races should have the right to marry, that decisions to use or forgo contraception is none of government’s business.

A minority of paternalistic religious critics have worked  tirelessly to turn back the clock– to return to a time when these decisions were made by the White Christian Males in charge, those Rubin properly characterized as a “fading racial, religious and political minority.” Alito’s draft represents a massive victory for that minority. If it is seen accurately for what it promises–a steady stream of decisions depriving citizens of hard-won rights to live their “intimate” lives as they see fit– I believe furious Americans will launch a civil revolution of massive proportions.

It will be war.

38 Comments

  1. Sen Collins came out and said Kavanaugh and Gorsich were not leaning this way. It is a difficult time for us but we do need to come to a conclusion nationally legislatively.
    Are Most abortions are done in the black community? Im interested in knowing the polling on the black communities stance on abortion.

  2. I’m gobsmacked. I’m furious.

    I can’t see beyond the fundamental horror that is this attack on the rights and sovereignty of half your population. This is the beginning of making women second-class citizens again. I guess the LGBTQ community is next. Will you go back to segregation eventually? No more “mixed” marriages?

    A god could prove its existence to me. And if a god did, and if that god actually resembled the god of the bible and/or the god that these people believe in, then I would turn my back on that god because I am better and more moral than it. It wouldn’t deserve anything from me but scorn.

  3. Glenn Greenwald had an interesting take on Alito’s “leaked” letter. I don’t have a legal degree but his argument seemed to be that the right to an abortion was not guaranteed in the constitution and therefore, Roe v Wade should have never been passed by the Supreme Court, to begin with. I guess he sees it as one political court undoing what another political court ruled on.

    Glenn writes:

    “This by-now-reflexive discourse about the Supreme Court ignores its core function. Like the U.S. Constitution itself, the Court is designed to be an anti-majoritarian check against the excesses of majoritarian sentiment. The Founders wanted to establish a democracy that empowered majorities of citizens to choose their leaders, but also feared that majorities would be inclined to coalesce around unjust laws that would deprive basic rights, and thus sought to impose limits on the power of majorities as well.

    The Federalist Papers are full of discussions about the dangers of majoritarian excesses. The most famous of those is James Madison’s Federalist 10, where he warns of “factions…who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

    https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-irrational-misguided-discourse?s=r

  4. John S, their “stance” doesn’t matter. Either women make the decisions about their own bodies or they don’t.

    I’ve already heard some talking points that a larger proportion of abortions occur among black women. It’s a way of suggesting that this is a bad thing; a scourge within the black community. And that’s crap, suggesting that removing women’s rights is a way to protect the black community. So if that’s your argument then I have less respect for you than I did.

  5. Todd, the constitution doesn’t say white people can’t bar black people from their restaurants (or schools, or businesses, or wherever), either. In fact, it’s the opposite, if anything. But when you recognize that people’s rights are being abridged, then you fix it. The constitution is not a bible. There’s no need to “pretend” it’s infallible and without error. It’s got lots of errors. They need fixing. Alito’s declaration is just a way to pretend otherwise, to pretend that government shouldn’t fix egregious errors in your founding documents.

  6. Here’s my take, considering I’m married to man outside my race:

    Roe v. Wade is based on the ‘right to privacy.’ If the majority opinion by SCOTUS suggests that the constitution does not protect the right to privacy… that affects a WHOLE lot of other decisions.

    Lawrence v. Texas: Decided in 2003, the court used the Right to Privacy to determine that it’s unconstitutional to punish people for committing sodomy. The Roe ruling could open the door for criminalizing homosexuality.

    Griswold v. Connecticut: Decided in 1965, this case protects the ability of married couples to buy contraceptives without government restriction. This isn’t just about abortion. Next up, contraceptives.

    Loving v. Virginia: This 1968 case, which threw out laws banning interracial marriages, was decided based on the right to privacy. If a state wanted to prohibit who people could marry — there is no protection from that without a right to privacy.

    Stanley v Georgia: This 1969 case found that there was a right to privacy around possession pornography. If a state wants to outlaw pornography or certain forms of adult pornography, it could do that without the right to privacy.

    Obergefell v. Hodges: The 2015 opinion that legalized same sex marriage used the right to privacy and the equal protection clause to do so. This could open the door for a state to try to test same sex marriage laws.

    Meyer v. Nebraska: This 1923 ruling allows families to decide for themselves if they want their children to learn a language other than English. This could open the door for racist states to try to outlaw learning their family’s languages.

    Skinner v Oklahoma: This 1942 ruling found that it’s unconstitutional to forcibly sterilize people. The Roe ruling could open the door for criminals, disabled people or BIPOC folks to be forcibly sterilized.

    Maybe the professor can discuss this in the future…after she returns from Amsterdam.

  7. Aging girl: that is exactly what today’s blog is about. The right to privacy is shorthand for the doctrine of substantive due process.

  8. I’m sorry, but Roe v. Wade was a policy decision regarding a contentious issue – abortion – that was imposed by a majority of Supreme Court justices. Even liberal scholars criticized the extremely tortuous reasoning contained that turned that policy decision into a matter of constitutional law. Now 50 years later, that decision may be reversed and the policy decision returned to elected representatives in the state and that’s judicial activism?

    Liberals need to stop constantly running off to our courts in the hopes of getting creative readings of the constitution and law by federal judges to enact their policy preferences into law. Everything done by those activist courts can be done by state legislatures and, in some cases, by Congress. That includes the abortion issue.

  9. AgingLGirl, thanks for the summary and l look forward to future commentary on any of it.

    Also, if you haven’t yet watched the series “A Handmaid’s Tale” based on Margaret Atwood book by the same title, now would be a good time to start. It’s on Hulu. Gilead is the new name of what is left of America after a civil war left a cabal of while male theocrats to rule based on their interpretation of scripture. We took a big step towards that dystopian future on Monday.

  10. I worked the polls yesterday for our primary election. It was my first time.
    I saw enthusiastic people from both political parties exercise their right to vote. I saw a young woman make her first vote, along with her elderly disabled grandparents, and her mother. There was a woman who left the poll in tears because she was so moved at her opportunity to cast her vote freely.
    What I came away with was a mixed bag of feelings and impressions. Mostly hope for our country, and contempt for both of our political parties. The hope comes from the people who came out during intermittent rain showers during a primary election that really does not matter in our state. The contempt comes from the ineptitude of either political party to do the right thing for the people who rely on them to make good policy, unless it benefits them in some direct way. The D Party is, I believe, on the right side of history in terms of seeking social justice, environmental protection, and progressive ideas, but they are incompetent and cannot agree on the color of shit. On the other hand, the R Party is unified behind whatever Trump and Carlson tells them to believe.
    We are going to go through a hard time in this country. If we wake up in time we can avoid much unnecessary suffering. But it may turn out that we will choose poorly, in which case we will lose the republic that former generations worked and died for. If we lose it, we did not deserve it in the first place.

  11. Missing from the original Roe decision, and all the discussions that followed, was the application of the Ninth Amendment, “ The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” this, not the nebulous concept of substantive due process under the 14th Amendment, should have been the starting point.

    Even in 1789, people had a right to privacy and intimacy. Had Roe started here, the entire landscape would have been different.

    It also explains the utter dishonesty of Alito’s draft, which focuses on 19th Century laws against abortion rather than the laws at the time the Constitution and the Ninth Amendment were written, when abortion was both legal and common until “quickening.”

  12. Freedom to make one’s own decisions about one’s own body is not a “policy decision”, Paul Ogden! And that freedom applies to men too.
    When you give the states the right to make decisions about not allowing abortion, you have given them the right to decide some day that you WILL have an abortion. At the same time you have laid the groundwork for government to take control of all such decision-making for both sexes. Imagine for a moment the “Indiana State Legislature” deciding if and when you can or will have a vasectomy.

  13. Well, today’s romp through the legal landscape of codifying our privacy issues was very educational for this non-lawyer. I am, however, married to a labor and discrimination lawyer. She is devastated (And therefore so am I) by this backward lurch to 1850 by Alito’s “leaked” memo. Leaked my ass! This backward ideologue intended to stir the pot and get the anti-abortion screamers into the streets to denigrate women.

    BUT, as with virtually everything the Republicans touch, this “strategy”, I predict, will backfire hugely. If nothing else, this furor should activate the lethargic would-be voter to get off his or her ass and vote. I also predict that this ideological wretchedness will turn out a mid-term voting public as none before it. The Republicans who are tied to the idiotic evangelical movements should find themselves trying to find jobs delivering pizzas after the elections…if we’re to survive as a true republic.

    I’ve been wrong more times than I’ve been right, and I know this blog is not a valid sample size, but we DO influence others in our spheres. Let’s hope that right-wing zombies like Sam Alito are “overruled” by the voice of the people.

  14. There may be no “right to privacy” enumerated in the Constitution, but if I may, I’d like to point out something that is.

    Amendment IX: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

    I have often wondered whether Justice Alito was, in fact, the stupidest of the justices. Now he seems to propose that Amendment IX does not exist, so I have to assume he doesn’t read to his grade level. Just to be fair, his is not the only intellect (or lack thereof) that I question. There is his beer loving buddy, and Justice Coney-Barrett, who constantly reminds me of an old improv comedy group, known as “Ladies against Women.”

  15. I appreciate the legal explanation, but without getting into the weeds, this all feels like another step towards authoritarianism.
    Packing the courts with people who will reach a pre-determined outcome based on tortured reasoning and giving it a sheen of legitimacy. This is not rule of law – neither is it democracy.

    This feels very much like a Putin court.

    This is no less of a coup than what was attempted on Jan 6th.

  16. It strikes me that the whole purpose of government is exactly the same as the challenge of running a very large complex corporation. That is to continuously bring to market innovative goods and services and manufacture and distribute and support them and do it in a way that satisfies all of the stakeholders in the business. The customers, the employees, those who invested in the start up means of production, those who lend money to create future capabilities in advance of them producing, the community, and the government to name just a few. In order to do that managers know that the most important means is to build and continuously reinforce a functional corporate culture that balances both rules and encourages good judgement in order to make the enforcement of rules as infrequent as possible.

    What kind of culture is our country/corporation trying to build?

    More and more Republicans are trying to build a cult instead of a high performance organization that is only interested in maintaining lucrative careers for those who, first and foremost, are exceptionally loyal to the party which is only loyal to career politicians and donors.

    Authoritarianism isn’t a condition but a process of the few taking over the rules until there is no need for judgement and normal interactions and people are rule programmed identical robots.

    People standing up for themselves and who they are may be messy but it’s the only way that humans flourish.

    The purpose of rules (laws) needs to return to encouraging good judgement, effective culture, that respects the space we each define not defining the space we each occupy.

  17. The dog has caught the car…

    Some of you mention that the Roe v Wade was a political decision. I am too young to know, but Heather Cox Richardson published a late 20th century history of abortion a few months ago. At the time of R v W, abortion was banned in many states, but abortion still happened, illegally, and often with bad consequences. There was some lobbying by the medical practice to make this safer and legal. When R v W happened, there was very little or no political reaction. It was not until the 80’s when Republicans were facing an uphill battle because their fiscal policies were failing, that some think tank figured out how to get the evangelical christians fired up and get out to vote, and that was to make anti-abortion a political party party plank.

    The culmination of this is a decades long fight to overturn this decision. There is no popular support to over turn it. A President elected by a minority, and a Senate that represents a minority of the people set this situation up in the court, because there is no way to actually make this law one way or another. Democrats did not have to campaign on being pro-choice, but Republicans did because it gets a part of their base fired up. Now that Republicans finally have what they want, I suspect all of those people who thought this personal choice was safe, will suddenly be energized.

    Like Shelia, I am deeply wary of the twisted political reasoning stated in the decision, and wonder how many other things are going to be swept away in the fog of this twisted reasoning.

    As the court chips away at the foundations of Federalism, it is interesting to note that before the Civil War, the world referred to the US as “those United States”. After the war, it changed to “The United States”.

  18. This is poor versus the rich. Plain and simple! Do you think a rich well to do person is going to let their daughter have a baby and ruin their kids life? No way in God’s green earth! If the rich get caught they will sic the lawyers on the people that turned them in.

  19. I believe RBG thought Roe was based on the wrong arguement – rather than privacy, it should have been approved under the equal protection cause, in that it impeded gender equality, so making it less vulnerable to attack. It seems she was right all along. God, I miss her – but I sure wish she would have stepped down earlier…

  20. One more thing, in reference to Phil’s comment. I used to work as a hematologist in a London NHS hospital in a past life – we used to regularly get woman from Middle Eastern countries fly in on a Friday to have a termination, leave on a Sunday. Always there for the rich the world over – money buys it all.

  21. James, you nailed it! The dyed-in-the-wool D’s and R’s highest, and in some cases only, priority is to enhance the power of their respective party. This is why I have always been an independent voter. While I agree that the D’s will generally come out on the right side of history on most issues, I cannot align myself to either of the mega-parties that keep a stranglehold on this country’s political landscape. I personally know some excellent candidates who are running for office this year, and it saddens me that they had to soil their names by adding a D or R. And unfortunately here in Hendricks County, the “D” after a name almost always means “defeated”.

  22. Since my earlier comments today somehow disappeared, I will scale back my venom and join others.

    Thank you Theresa for this; “Freedom to make one’s own decisions about one’s own body is not a “policy decision”, Paul Ogden!” Or what if the government decides you will NOT have that vasectomy, Paul?

    Kurt; I would change your term “authoritarianism” to “dictatorship”.

    And to join Vernon’s “romp through the legal landscape of codifying our privacy issues” I will return to 1970 when I needed my husband’s permission, on a signed document, to have a much needed tubal ligation due to 5 children and “female problems” at the age of 30. Then again in 1972, while we were legally separated in the process of divorce, I again needed his permission for the hysterectomy.

  23. Thank you, Phil … it is and has always been that simple … and that sad …

  24. Pete,

    You have mis-identified the reason for government. Government is most definitely NOT like a business, even though it shares many of the vagaries of business…like outright corruption and power-seeking jackasses found in most board rooms.

    OUR government was designed to at least try to facilitate the necessities of an entire society, defend its borders and its citizens from destroying one another. In many of those areas, our governments at various levels are an abject failure, but also quite successful.

    You would NEVER have seen private enterprise enter the space race of the 50s, 60s and 70s without the infusion of government money, its establishment of agencies and its operational dynamics to, literally, beat the Russians to the moon. Since cost accountants in business see the world through the lens of profits, the quarterly report and the screaming from stockholders for MORE profits in LESS time, that would not apply to government. Government is NOT there to make money or balance a budget.

    You can look it up.

  25. My college age son and I took a bus to Washington a few years ago and joined 1.2 million passionate people on the Mall to make clear to our “representatives” that we wanted the right to choose when or if to have children preserved. It was the largest gathering of protesters in history, and got a small paragraph on page 5 in the Star. We will not go back to living in fear. The majority of Americans agree. This usurping by the Court will not stand.

  26. I think the act of the “leak” is even more important than the content…as a commentator wrote yesterday – a traditional conservative, no less…

    “Perhaps some of you feel that the institution had already been betrayed. That the Court, long before this leak or this explosive decision, had already been diminished. Maybe the refusal to consider Merrick Garland put you over the edge. Or maybe it was the revelations about Clarence Thomas’s wife and January 6th. Or maybe it was the Kavanaugh hearings. How he was grilled. Or that he was nominated. Or maybe it was earlier: Bush v. Gore or Anita Hill or Robert Bork. no

    This feels different than all of that. Why? Because all of those other instances were moments of outrage bookended by long periods of sobriety and seriousness. They were the exceptions that proved the rule. Now, everything seems to have been turned upside down, and the outrage, the uncontrollable or unslakable partisan fury, seems to have overtaken everything. Our sense of history, our respect for the institution, for norms, for even more basic human things: like trust, devotion, privacy, integrity. Jonathan Turley put it this way late last night: “There appears no ethical rule or institutional interest that can withstand this age of rage.”

    To the jaded and hardened who have already crossed over into this new age—an age in which power and winning are the only tests of virtue, and the old ideas, like civility and respect, now seem twee—the leak might seem normal or even necessary. But it is nothing more than the most recent salvo in our race to the bottom.”

  27. It is remarkable the extent to which the authoritarian right (in the States and abroad) is fixated on gender roles and sexuality. If Roe is overturned, it is one more and a particularly extreme illustration of the Right’s fear of women’s equality and empowerment and their hang-ups about any sexual expression that is about consensual pleasure rather than procreation.

  28. I recall that we were required to take two semesters of Constitutional Law in law school and that both procedural and substantive due process were applied to our case law method of study. I think both are necessarily involved in Alito’s drivel about to become the law of the land, though with his assignment of both the substance and enforcement to the states I’m feeling like Jefferson and Madison must have felt during the years of the Articles of Confederation predating adoption of our Constitution.

    I have stayed away from the niceties and applications of the law (whatever it may be and however, as here, unrespected by failure to apply the doctrine of stare decisis) in favor of going for the jugular, to wit: the right of privacy. There are simply some things that are none of the government’s business, and seeking reproductive health care is one of them, a search that is or should be beyond the reach of the political establishment. So procedural due process or substantive due process? Both. Pro choice? Decidedly.

  29. John S:

    In a quick Google search just now, the best figures on the racial composition of women who have had abortions in the U.S. that I could find were from 2014. There are more than likely more recent figures out there.

    The figures cited in 2014, were that 39% of women who had abortions in the U.S. were White, 28% Black; 25% Hispanic; 9% Other. [The racial percentages don’t appear to have changed much between 2008-14].
    https://www.guttmacher.org/report/characteristics-us-abortion-patients-2014picture.

    The raw racial percentages, however, can’t and don’t provide an accurate picture of whether Black women — as a cohort — have more abortions than White women do in the U.S. (As your question seems to be asking). It’s not surprising that the largest number (percentage) of women who had abortions would be White, given that Whites make up a much larger percentage of the total U.S. population than Blacks.

    A way to determine whether Black women in the U.S. have more abortions than White women, is to look at the rate of abortions for each racial cohort of women. A figure I found cited several times is that Black women in the U.S. have been having abortions at a rate of about 4 times the rate of White women in the U.S. for several decades. Thus historically, Black women in the U.S. apparently have more abortions as a racial cohort than White women. A possible reason for why that might be the case might be explained in the statistics in the next paragraph.

    The largest determining factor of whether a woman in the U.S. will have an abortion is not race. It’s economic status. 3/4th low income; 49% below Federal poverty level; 26% 100-199% of poverty level. Also, only 14% of women who had an abortion were married, but 31% were “cohabiting,” which means that slightly over 50% of women who had abortions were essentially single, non-married, and non-cohabiting. Being a poor, single woman, trying to raise a child (or children — 59% of the women who had abortions in 2014 had one previous live birth) in the U.S. by yourself is extremely difficult.

    Most surprisingly (perhaps not for the cynical among us) is of the women, who had abortions and who also reported having a religious faith, the largest percentage reported they were Catholics [24%].

    Finally, the question concerning the “Black communities stance on abortions.” Abortion has been a controversial issue among some members of Black “communities,” just as it is in White communities and/or all communities in the U.S. There are those in the “Black communities” who allege abortions of Black babies constitute genocide being committed against Blacks by Whites (Whites in the pro-life community have also sometimes made similar allegations in attempt to rally Blacks to the pro-life cause).

    I have no idea how pervasive that view in the Black “communities” in the U.S. might be (“the polling”). “Black communities” aren’t monolithic. I suspect that, as on many or perhaps most other subjects, there would be a wide divergence of opinion in the “Black communities” as all Black people don’t think exactly alike simply because they happen to be Black. Just as there is a wide divergence of opinion concerning abortions in White or other communities.

  30. The Greenwald piece is trash, based on the presumption that state legislatures are magically the REAL will of the people, rather than considering the UNITED states as the dominant democracy. The same Confederate view preceded the Constitution, because the individual states are uncooperative to a degree destructive of nationhood.
    Carried to its logical end, each individual is a state, and makes his own rules, a child’s view of governance.
    Thank you for this piece, Sheila!

  31. The presumption of the draft opinion is that state legislatures are magically the REAL will of the people, rather than considering the UNITED states as the dominant democracy.

    Gerrymandering and corporate capture have eroded that, but this idiocy might be restorative through voter turnout.

    The same Confederate view preceded the Constitution, and was overruled because the individual states are uncooperative to a degree destructive of nationhood.

    cf Civil War 1861-5. Dissolution IS possible, but very difficult, legally.

    Carried to its logical end, each individual is a state, and makes his own rules, a child’s view of governance, and the thesis of Libertarians and Sovereign Citizens.

  32. David F; it always gets down to Follow The Money, no matter the issue. This is the distaff side of that equation; the LACK of money to be followed is a major factor in all areas of health care but more so for prenatal and maternity care for women. For birth control, health care during pregnancy and day-to-day care health care for for babies and children…and for child care for working mothers are all cost prohibitive.

    “The largest determining factor of whether a woman in the U.S. will have an abortion is not race. It’s economic status.” This is a major truth; thank you.

  33. Random thoughts –

    Expanding on Ormond’s statements, Alito believes the “the people”, as it appears in the Ninth Amendment, means Republican controlled legislatures and that you and I only have “rights” if the STATE deigns to grant them to us.

    When they issued the opinion in Brown, many of the Justices felt that something so monumental needed to be unanimous. Even Roe was 7-2. How typical that the anti-liberal court has a string of 5-4 decisions.

    As for Collins and Murkowski – why to I keep hearing Claude Rains? I’m shocked!

    Collins and Murkowski supported the McConnell view that their purpose was to prevent any and all Democratic appointments and Democratic proposals, and to jam through any and all Republican appointments. They enabled and will continue to do so. “Moderate”? That’s a laugh.

  34. I love all these comments. I confess I read without commenting because y’all have already expressed my feelings. This issue has provoked even me to comment. If this “leak” doesn’t cause liberals to get out the vote, democracy is indeed doomed.

  35. Republicans are for limited government except for their zeal to control couples’ intimate decisions. The decision to become a parent is life-changing in so many ways. If people don’t want to be parents, do we really want to force birth of children to adults who don’t want or can’t afford them?

    If Roe v. Wade is overturned, governments can once again outlaw contraception, inter-racial marriage, same sex marriages, and more. The Supreme Court has already said employers can deny health insurance coverage for any contraceptives the employer finds objectionable based on the employer’s religion (the Hobby Lobby case).

    When exploring a pro-life organization’s website this evening, (https://www.hli.org/resources/abortifacient-brief-birth-control-pill/), I was appalled by their arguments that MOST birth control pills are abortifacients because they prevent fertilized eggs (which they define as “human beings”) from implanting in the uterine lining. Birth control pills do not abort “human beings”. If a fertilized egg does not implant, a woman does not become pregnant.

    An ounce of prevention is worth pounds of cure. If pro-life organizations REALLY oppose abortions, they should strenuously support prevention of unwanted pregnancies. But they don’t. They don’t talk loudly about it, but they oppose contraception too – even for the poorest parents who struggle to afford health care, food and shelter for themselves and the children they already have.

    I long for the time when every child is wanted by their parents, and our government and employers adopt real pro-family policies which help and encourage rather than penalize parenthood and family life.

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