This is a really special time that deserves some real thought. Roe v Wade was decided on January 22, 1973, then the babies started dying. According to what I have read recently, over 63 million babies have been aborted during that time. It was in 1975 that the Lord literally opened the door to a world that I DID NOT know existed - the world of politics, and thrust me into the middle of a number of important issues, including abortion. Through the years, as every anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision came around, I, and many others, really wondered if we would EVER see that decision overturned. Well, PRAISE THE LORD, on June 24, 2022, many of us lived to see the Supreme Court overturn that dreadful decision. It was literally breathtaking to realize that, after all these years, the thousands of people who have devoted their entire lives to doing everything they could to protect the most innocent and smallest of us all finally saw the victory.
I can't help but think of our amazing founder, Phyllis Schlafly, and how devoted she was to opposing abortion and working toward its demise, and wishing she was here to celebrate.
Phyllis Schlafly, told washingtonpost.com, "Roe v. Wade was the worst decision in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court and is responsible for the killing of millions of unborn babies."
I don't know how Heaven works, but I sure hope she knows about this victory!!
Now we know the issue is not over - the Supreme Court decision DID NOT do away with abortion, but just turned those decisions back to the states. So there is still work to do. Through the years, Tennessee Pro-life supporters have done a good job in passing a lot of appropriate restrictions designed to protect babies within the constraints of Roe v Wade. In addition, the "Trigger bill" was passed. On August 25, 2022, Tennessee began enforcing its trigger ban, which prohibits abortion at all stages of pregnancy, Code Ann. § 39-15-213 (stating that the ban will take effect thirty days after “the issuance of the judgment…of the United States Supreme Court” which took place on July 28, 2022). There is discussion about this bill going on as the 2023 legislative session begins, so we will be attentive and engaged.
First March for Life after Supreme Court Declares No Constitutional Right to Abortion
Today, Eagle Forum President Kristen Ullman and Executive Director Tabitha Walter join the thousands of people from different states, backgrounds, races, and political parties who will walk together from the National Mall to the Supreme Court in solidarity to proclaim the fundamental right to life of all people from conception until natural death. This year, the 50th March for Life is the first to be held since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24, 2022,
Statement of Eagle Forum President, Kristen Ullman:
Just seven months ago, after 50 years of living under the wrongly decided Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court finally declared in Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health the truth that, “[t]he Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.” The Court went on to say what we in the pro-life movement have known since the beginning, “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”
Some may ask if Roe v. Wade is overturned, why still march? First, we celebrate decades of hard work from the pro-life movement. Pro-lifers have provided extensive education and research into fetal development, have walked alongside women facing crisis pregnancies, and lobbied lawmakers to pass legislation that values all life.
3 Out of 4 Women Support Stronger Pro-Life Legislation, Poll Finds
A strong majority of Americans support stronger pro-life laws, according to a new poll released just days before the annual March for Life. More than two-thirds of Americans (69%) would support ending all abortion no later than the first trimester, including nearly three out of four women (72%) and nearly half (49%) of all surveyed Democrats.
The poll found 44% of people want increased abortion restrictions, including not allowing abortion at all (8%), allowing abortion only to save the life of the mother (10%), or in the case of rape or incest (26%). Only one in five voters believe abortion should be available at any point in pregnancy, without restriction.
The Marist poll, sponsored in partnership with the Knights of Columbus, shows a strong pro-life majority more in line with recent Republican pro-life legislation than the Democratic Party platform, which calls for taxpayer-funded abortion until birth. Additionally, the survey, conducted earlier this month, found:
78% of Americans oppose forcing taxpayers to fund abortion overseas;
60% of Americans oppose forcing taxpayers to fund abortion in the United States;
94% oppose sex-selective abortions (because of the child’s sex);
77% say people with religious objections should not be legally required to carry out abortions
60% of Americans oppose aborting a child because the child has been diagnosed with Down syndrome;
55% say employers with religious objections should not be forced to pay for abortion coverage in their employees’ insurance; and
91% of Americans, including 88% of Democrats, support the work of pro-life pregnancy resource centers.
Those results show a Republican legislative agenda is in the mainstream, or perhaps slightly behind, public opinion.
For instance, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) introduced the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act (H.R. 7) which restricts federal funds from going to “any abortion” (except in the cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother), stops taxpayer dollars from funding health benefits that cover abortion, and bars doctors who work for the federal government from carrying out abortions. The House had been poised to vote on the bill — which has attracted 113 co-sponsors, all Republicans — in its first two weeks in session. The vote on the bill has yet to be rescheduled, as of this writing.
Live from Music Row, Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee State Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson to the newsmaker line to clarify the abortion trigger law, third-grade retention bill, and the possibility of direct instruction in K-12 public schools.
Leahy: We welcome to our newsmaker line right now, our very good friend, State Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson. Good morning, Senator Johnson.
Johnson: Good morning, Michael. Good to be back with you. Happy New Year! I don’t think we’ve spoken in 2023 yet.
Leahy: Happy New Year to you as well. So the Tennessee General Assembly convened in an organizational meeting last week. You picked your leaders. Congratulations on being named State Senate majority leader again. And Randy McNally, of course, Speaker of the state senate, and Lieutenant Governor, and Cameron Sexton was elected as Speaker of the House.
Then you take a break and you come back into session to discuss bills, I think a week from Monday, January 30th. What do you do in this interim period?
Johnson: For some of our new members, it’s time for them to hire staff. And we also have new committee chairmen who have been appointed or perhaps moved to a different committee. The way the process works, you’re right. We have that organizational session. We elect a Speaker.
That Speaker then passes out committee assignments and names the committee chairman for the various committees. And then you need some time for people to move offices, hire additional staff, and then get back to work. Luckily, on the Senate side, Michael, there are fewer of us.
There are 33 Senators versus 99 House members. And so our process is a little simpler. We have three new members of the Senate, and we do have a couple of new committee chairmen. So we’re taking a one-week recess in order to get all of that done.
The House, of course, has more members. It’s a little more complicated. They’re taking two weeks. We all convene this coming Friday in order to prepare for the governor’s inauguration, which will take place on Saturday, and then we’ll reconvene the following Tuesday. The House will come back in a week after us.
Leahy: Okay, so you’re going to get down to business a little bit before the House, in part because there are fewer of you. It looks to me like there are three big bills out there for consideration, probably more, but to me, see if I’ve missed any of the trigger bill after the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion, the third-grade retention bill, and then the new transportation bill that Transportation Commissioner Butch Eley is going to propose. Tell us about the trigger bill. What do you see happening there?
Johnson: The way I like to break it down, Michael, and I think we may have touched on this before, I put it into two lanes. There are two lanes that will be discussed relative to abortion in Tennessee. Lane one is to perhaps clarify the spirit and the intention of what we have on the books now.
What we have on the books right now is an absolute prohibition on abortion in the state of Tennessee, with one very narrow exception, and that is the life of the mother, you might say, too, for substantial reproductive harm. I believe it’s the language that we have on the books.
We have had physicians that have approached us with concerns about the language and whether or not it is clear to protect those doctors who, in their best medical judgment, believe that it is absolutely necessary to terminate a pregnancy in order to save the life of that mother.
I can tell you from my standpoint, I believe most members of the General Assembly, we don’t want that to be unclear. We want that to be clear, whether it’s bringing up examples like ectopic pregnancies and hemorrhages and these various medical conditions that are legitimate and can happen.
I believe that those are consistent with the bill that we passed. It was a trigger bill that became triggered upon the Dobbs case coming down, and so I think we will address that then.
Tennessee Attorney General Skrmetti Files Amicus Brief Against the Department of Veterans Affairs New Abortion Rule
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti joined a coalition of 17 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in the Western District of Texas in the case of Carter v. McDonough.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reversed long-held agency practices and adopted a final interim rule in September 2022, allowing taxpayer-funded abortions and abortion counseling for veterans and their beneficiaries. An opposing VA nurse and Army veteran, Stephanie Carter, filed a lawsuit against the new rule.
Carter claimed in her suit, filed in December, that her “sincerely held religious beliefs prohibit her from offering abortion services and providing counseling required by application of the” VA policy.
Skrmetti and the coalition of 17 attorneys general filed the amicus brief in support of Carter, with the brief stating, “These [State] laws strike a balance among the competing interests and reflect the outcome of hard-fought democratic processes. Some amici have chosen to adopt tighter restrictions on abortion following Dobbs. Other States have maintained or embraced more permissive regimes. All States have provisions in their abortion laws to protect a woman’s life.”
According to the brief, the VA’s defense is based on a legal authority that does not exist
PLEASE DON'T MISS THIS TOUCHING AND INFORMATIVE PIECE:
Why I Think of Clarence Thomas and the Nuns Who Inspired Him Each MLK Day
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is hailed by many for his inspiring life. But through it all, good or bad, Thomas stays focused on the important things in life.
He never has forgotten those who helped him along the way. For many years on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the justice would visit his eighth-grade teacher, Sister Mary Virgilius Reidy, and dozens of her fellow nuns, in a retirement convent in New Jersey.
Clarence Thomas was born into abject poverty in the segregated Deep South to parents who were poor and uneducated. His father left when he was 2, and he ultimately was sent to live with his grandparents in Savannah, Georgia.
His grandfather enrolled Clarence and his brother in St. Benedict’s, a segregated, all-black, Catholic elementary school. It was run by the Missionary Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception (most of them from Ireland), who endured disparaging slurs, including the N-word, for dedicating their lives to teaching black students.
The Franciscan nuns changed his life, and Thomas always has been grateful for their love and support. The nuns held their students to the highest academic standards, and did not allow them to make any excuse, even though these students lived under state-enforced discrimination.
As Thomas recounts in “Created Equal”: “You knew they loved you. When you think somebody loves you and deeply cares about your interests, somehow they can get you to do hard things.”
In the 1980s, when he was part of the Reagan administration, Thomas sought out Sister Virgilius, who was living in Boston. Thomas recalls: “I went by to see her, and I sat with her, and I thanked her for teaching me and making me believe that we could learn, and for not letting me slip into victim status and forcing me out of it.”
In 1984, Thomas returned to his hometown of Savannah to pay tribute at an event honoring the Franciscan Sisters, where he said:
There was no way I could have survived if it had not been for the nuns—our nuns, who made me pray when I didn’t want to and didn’t know why I should—who made me work when I saw no reason to—who made me believe in the equality of races when our country paid lip service to equality and our church tolerated inequality—who made me accept responsibilities for my own life when I looked for excuses. No, my friends, without our nuns, I would not have made it to square one.
Thomas again thanked the nuns when he was nominated by President George H.W. Bush to the Supreme Court in 1991, and Sister Virgilius, then 80 years old and nursing a broken arm, later testified on behalf of her former student at his confirmation hearings.
After Thomas joined the Supreme Court, for many years on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we would leave his home around 6 a.m. and drive up to Tenafly, New Jersey, to spend the day with Sister Virgilius and her fellow sisters, many of whom also taught Thomas and others at St. Benedict’s.
We had lunch in the cafeteria with all the nuns, and Thomas’ face displayed such joy as he reminisced about those days and caught up on how the nuns were all doing. He would visit sisters who were bedridden in the infirmary.
When Sister Virgilius passed away in 2013 at age 100, we attended her funeral together.
In October 2021, many celebrated Thomas’ 30th anniversary on the Supreme Court and his influence on American law, including a daylong celebration at The Heritage Foundation with remarks by the justice himself. But Thomas was more focused on an event earlier that week: the blessing of a statue of Sister Virgilius and two students at a cemetery where 200 Franciscan sisters are buried.
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