Our Culture will Collapse by 2030.(142)

Abortion and the death of justice.

Early in the 1970’s there was an outcry over deaths caused by back-alley and self induced abortions. Victim numbers reached estimates of 20,000, nationwide. Reports were sketchy and gathered from unofficial sources. Coroners were most often the issuers of Death Certificates, but most Coroners outside large cities were elected. The low pay and a gruesome work didn’t require medical training, few candidates were willing to run. Coroners were reluctant to state that an abortion was the cause of death. Abortion was illegal, if self induced, it meant suicide. A few hundred dollars paid to the Coroner often avoided such a scandalous diagnoses in favor of “menstrual hemorrhage”. Congress was under pressure to do something, but was allegedly restrained by constituents and advocates of Christian doctrine.

Jane Roe, a single woman, residing in Dallas County, Texas, instituted this federal action in March 1970 against the District Attorney of the county. She sought a declaratory judgment that the Texas criminal abortion statutes were unconstitutional on their face, and sought an injunction restraining the D.A. from enforcing the statutes.

Roe was unmarried and pregnant; she stated that she wished to terminate her pregnancy by an abortion “performed by a competent, licensed physician, under safe, clinical conditions”; that she was unable to get a legal abortion in Texas because her life did not appear to be threatened by the continuation of her pregnancy; and that she could not afford to travel to another jurisdiction in order to secure a legal abortion under safe conditions. She claimed that the Texas statutes were unconstitutionally vague and that they abridged her right of personal privacy, protected by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. By an amendment to her complaint, Roe purported to sue the Texas official (Wade) “on behalf of herself and all other women” similarly situated. She was joined by Mr. & Mrs “Doe”. Mrs. Doe was medically advised to terminate her pregnancy for medically compelling reasons, and was stopped by the Texas law, from obtaining the medically safe procedure by a licensed doctor.

James Hubert Hallford, a licensed physician, sought and was granted leave to intervene in Roe’s action. In his complaint, he alleged that he had been arrested previously for violations of the Texas abortion statutes, that two such prosecutions were pending against him. He described conditions of patients who came to him seeking abortions, and he claimed that for many cases he, as a physician, was unable to determine whether they fell within or outside the exception recognized by Article 1196. He alleged that, as a consequence, the statutes were vague and uncertain, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that they violated his own and his patients’ rights to privacy in the doctor-patient relationship and his own right to practice medicine, rights he claimed were guaranteed by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Roe prevailed in the decision in the SCOTUS in 1973.

From the moment the SCOTUS decision was released, anti-abortion forces mobilized to reverse the decision. Every conceivable objection was manufactured to make it more difficult for Women’s Health clinics to function. Abortion doctors were physically attacked, some even killed. Doctors had to be registered to practice with a hospital, facilities were required to comply with the strictest physical standards, such as 10’ hallway width, fire and earthquake standards. Bands of opponents were stationed outside clinics, to harass and shame women seeking entry. OB’s & Gynecologists and family planning centers were forbidden to advise, or even mention abortion as a possibile alternative to a full term birth. A fertilized ovum, even at the state of only a few cell divisions was declared a human person. Entitled to all the rights and protections of a child.

20 years ago “Conservatives” realized the abortion issue could benefit them politically, by adding the anti LGBTQ forces, anti gay marriage constituents, 2nd ammendment advocates and White Supremacists joining together.

49 years after women were acknowledged to have the right under the Constitution, a newly constituted SCOTUS, that had been contrived by cheating and lying to add justices, who could be counted on to abandon previous decisions of the court as settled law (stare decisis) took it away.

Our Supreme Court, recognized and respected the world over as the ultimate arbiters of justice became the lap dog of a disgraced political party, led by an “effing moron”. [Secy of State, Rex Tillerson.]

Promenading in the robes of the giants of Juris prudence: fawning for gifts and favors from the ultra rich, who had paved their paths with political donations, they descended into ridicule and scorn, taking America’s reputation with them.

We are in the political orbit of the Presidential elections of 2024. Democrats will enlarge the SCOTUS to restore women’s rights to control their own bodies, including the prevention of pregnancy as well as terminating it.

Have a nice day.