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The Supreme Court corrected a grave constitutional error when their ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health overturned both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. This returns the power to protect life back to the American people through their elected representatives at the state and federal level.
The Left is smearing conservatives and spreading falsehoods about the decision. Here are the facts:
Myth 1: The majority of Americans support abortion.
FACT: Most Americans want to protect unborn babies from abortion. 71 percent of Americans support protections for life after 15 weeks of gestation, protections that Roe prevented states from passing.
The Left claims Americans support Roe v. Wade, but the legal framework for the case is widely misunderstood. In fact, public sentiment changes dramatically once the facts of the case are broken down.
Many Americans don’t know that Roe permitted abortions up until the moment of birth. A Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll found that a majority of Americans said they either wanted the decision overturned or protections for life to start earlier, at 15 weeks. In addition, a 61 percent of Americans believe that abortion should either be illegal or left to the states to decide. A plurality of Americans support protections for unborn lives after 6 weeks of life in the womb, when a heartbeat can be detected, according to Heritage Action polling.
Myth 2: The United States’ abortion laws are already overly restrictive.
FACT: The United States actually has some of the most permissive abortion laws in the entire world, just like some of the most notorious human rights abusers, China and North Korea. The United States has been one of just five nations in the world to permit elective late-term abortions after 24 weeks – 75 percent of nations do not permit elective abortion after 12 weeks. Nations including France protect against abortion after 12 weeks.
The Democrat’s “Abortion for All” legislation would codify this radical approach and go even further than Roe, threatening any state protections for life. Specifically, their legislation would allow late-term abortions and discriminatory abortions (abortions that occur to select babies based upon their sex, race, or some other genetic characteristic) – which a majority of the American people oppose. It would also endanger policies that protect rights of conscience and religious liberty for health care providers.
Myth 3: When Roe was overturned, abortion was outlawed across the entire country.
FACT: The Dobbs decision made no change to federal laws on abortion. It simply restored the authority to decide on abortion to the people’s elected representatives, who can now decide how they want to protect life and fight for the unborn. Under previous Supreme Court precedent, states and the federal government could only protect the life of the unborn once the child was considered “viable.”
With Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey overturned, legislators are now able to protect life at a much earlier stage of pregnancy than they previously could. Twenty-six states have protections for life already in place, including conditional laws which either have or will soon spring into effect now that Roe has been overturned.
Federal law could also be used to protect life, but sadly, Democrats in Congress are trying to pass their “Abortion for All” legislation. This bill was passed by Pelosi’s House, and if it were passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Biden, it would result in the death of thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands— of unborn children every year.
Myth 4: Abortion is safe for women.
FACT: Despite pro-abortion activists claiming that abortions do not have health risks, there are a number of dangerous risks or complications associated with abortions for a woman’s immediate and long-term health, including blood clots, infections, cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest, subsequent preterm birth, future placenta previa, miscarriage, and even death. Aside from the risks of the procedures themselves, there are also severe mental health side effects for women post-abortion.
Myth 5: Women will be denied life-saving procedures.
FACT: Every pro-life law, including Texas’, allows for care for women suffering miscarriage, ectopic pregnancies or a septic uterus. To claim that these laws prohibit providing care for these life-threatening conditions risks dangerous confusion and is grossly irresponsible. If a woman’s life is in immediate danger, doctors can also administer a preterm delivery instead of terminating the life of her child.
Even Planned Parenthood recognizes the falseness of some of the claims surrounding life-saving procedures. Their website says, “Treating an ectopic pregnancy isn’t the same thing as getting an abortion.”
Myth 6: The pro-life movement is merely pro-birth, not pro-child.
FACT: Much of the pro-life legislation being passed at the state level, or proposed at the federal level, includes funding and support for mothers. There are assistance programs and non-profits already working to support maternal health, provide post-birth education, or create safe harbor laws. Rather than supporting the organizations that help women, the progressive Left is harassing them and even vandalizing their storefronts.
The real hypocrisy comes from an abortion industry masquerading as women’s health care. For years, Planned Parenthood has touted that abortion only accounts for three percent of their services. However, in the days following Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, numerous Planned Parenthood clinics have closed their doors rather than carrying on with their supposed 97 percent of non-abortion services.
Myth 7: Making abortion illegal will criminalize IVF treatments.
FACT: In vitro fertilization is not banned by abortion protections. We should protect every unborn human life. There are fertility treatments and methods of IVF that do not intentionally destroy a human life. Pro-life protections still allow these treatments to continue unhindered.
Myth 8: If Roe is overturned, interracial or same-sex marriage may be outlawed as a result.
FACT: There is absolutely nothing in overturning Roe that would impact interracial or same-sex marriage. In fact, the decision clarifies explicitly on page five and elsewhere in the opinion that this issue is “fundamentally different” because it concerns an unborn life.
Myth 9: Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch misled senators during their confirmation process.
FACT: No justice currently on the bench promised to uphold Roe, and it would have been inappropriate for them to do so.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained in her 1993 hearing she would give no “hints … forecasts … [or] previews” on how she may decide in a specific case. Every justice since has followed that guidance and conservative judges are no exception. Transcripts of the hearings show exactly what the Justices said.
Justice Gorsuch stated, “Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, is a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court. It has been reaffirmed. . . . So a good judge will consider it as precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court worthy as treatment of precedent like any other.” He also added, “If I were to start telling you which are my favorite precedents or which are my least favorite precedents, or if I viewed precedent in that fashion, I would be tipping my hand and suggesting to litigants that I have already made up my mind about their cases.”
Justice Kavanaugh stated, “Roe v. Wade is an important precedent of the Supreme Court. It has been reaffirmed many times. It was reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992. . . . So that precedent on precedent is quite important as you think about stare decisis in this context.”
Notably, neither justice stated that precedent can never be reconsidered, for Roe or any other case.