Welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Hey, this is the unbelievably, I don’t know, most incredible What You Need to Know I’ve ever done. I’m actually recording this ahead of time because of a lot of things that are going on and, well, it’s Friday, June 24, when I’m recording this. And just a few hours ago, the United States Supreme Court reversed 50 years of really terrible law.
And the terrible law was basically, they made up a way to protect abortion from the federal level. They just made it up. They made it up and they created a kind of right to privacy that there was something out there in cases before, and then they bootstrapped on other things and they just pronounced this. And for 50 years, America has been under the scourge of our law, protecting abortion as a fundamental right. Basically, it was terrible.
So it was reversed, and it was reversed by a five to four opinion with Justice Alito, as we sort of knew was happening, in charge of writing the opinion.
And it’s an extraordinary opinion. Basically says, look, that was made up. The decision was made up, and we’re not going to do that. And at the end of the decision, justice Alito says a kind of phrase that was really well done.
He basically points everyone back to the fact that the decision, it does take away this fundamental right that was made up, but it also puts in place the idea that it’s going to be back to the states and to the people.
I’m trying to find the exact language. Here it is.
The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania versus Casey are overruled.
The authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.
That was always the point that the late Justice Scalia would make. He’d say, when you look at the Constitution, there’s no right to abortion in the Constitution. And so, he also would say there’s no prohibition on abortion there.
Now, I would argue that there’s a prohibition on killing, but, I mean, we can talk about that. But he would say this whole thing, the idea of taking the abortion debate out of the people’s hands and putting it into a made up right of Roe v. Wade was wrong, a wrong decision. And so that’s what Alito says. It goes back to the states. And immediately in the states, to their credit, Attorney General of Missouri, Eric Schmitt signed the trigger law. There’s a trigger law that Missouri passed, legislature passed, that says, hey, if Roe v. Wade is ever reversed, we ban abortion. And he signed it. He said, I’m enforcing that right now.
So what you’re going to see is a spirited conversation debate and probably legal back and forth, both legislatively and otherwise, to say, what is your community going to do? Say your state? But generally it will be state driven. But what are you going to do? If you want to live in a place where they have abortion on demand? It looks like that’s California or New York or New Jersey, maybe. But if you want to live in a place that has a ban on abortion, there’s going to be places like that in Missouri and otherwise. But it’s an extraordinary thing.
And let me just pause and say for the better part of 25 years, I’ve been involved in the prolife efforts. I’ve been litigating cases as an attorney. I’ve been part of prayer movements. I’ve been part of policy. I did a stint at Americans United for Life, which is a pro life organization, kind of a legal entity that does lots of litigation, but also strategy. And in some ways, I never thought today would come, to be honest. I think a lot of us thought down the road someday. But here’s what occurred.
What occurred in this country in the last five years, two things. Two things happened, really, the last six years.
Number one is there was a growing consensus that abortion was wrong in more and more ways. So how did that happen? Well, Heartbeat Bills, people going around saying, listen for a heartbeat. That tells you something. The technology of 3D, Sonograms, and the technology where you can see what’s going on here had more and more people saying, wait a second, don’t just tell me it’s a choice or a clump of cells. Let’s talk about this. We had smarter people at the same time making sure that there was conversations about the woman, not just about the abortion, not just about the baby. I think of my friend Bridgit VanMeans, who is so good at Thrive Nation on this topic. Anyway. That’s one whole category of what happened. In the last six years it’s been a sea change, and there’s people that deserve credit for that. Our organization, the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles played a role, but the big person was Janet Porter, who led the Heartbeat Bill, Congressman Steve King at the federal level and then across the country, Ohio, Missouri, Oklahoma, different states where state leaders said, yeah, I’m going to take that up. That made a huge difference in changing the way people were thinking about abortion, because at the end of the day, it still is. Even though the Supreme Court makes its decision, it still happens in American life, which means politics, too.
The second thing that occurred was the 2016 election.When history is written, and I intend to write part of that history, it will write that 2016 was a pivot year. Now, why, around the same time that Donald Trump was securing the nomination and beating all of the Republican establishment poobahs’ choices, Scott Walker was out. Jeb Bush was out. Even Ted Cruz, for a Minute it looked like he was going to be the guy that united them. Even he was out.
What you need to know is Donald Trump was securing the nomination in March in April, maybe early April, but just weeks before that, justice Antonin Scalia passed away suddenly. In terms of what we saw, I think he had had some illnesses in the past, but when he died, the thought was, well, Obama’s got a chance to pick, and yeah, he’s got a Republican Senate, but he could pick somebody they’ll take. Can’t he work his way through? Clinton did that.
And in 2016, Mitch McConnell, to his everlasting credit, Mitch McConnell said, I will not even consider a replacement, not Merrick Garland, not anybody else. That’s what he did.
And so the 2016 election became about who picked Scalia’s replacement, and I will maintain until the end of time that it was a big factor in assuring conservatives, Christian conservatives, Protestant conservatives, evangelical conservatives, Jewish conservatives, Catholic conservatives, ensuring that they understood what was at stake.
And so Trump won, and Trump ran on appointing good judges, and he picked really good judges. And ultimately, because of fate and faith, he ended up with three picks, including replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And that’s it.
So those two things that happened, those two kind of side by side tracks of things going on in the last six years transformed the environment, heartbeat bills, technology, young people, students for Life. Kristan Hawkins deserves a lot of credit, lots of people saying, Hey, wait a second. It’s not a clump of cells.
It’s not just a choice. What’s going on here? And that made the ground more fertile. And then at the same time, we had Trump winning, and Trump being fearlessly pro life, confidently pro life, and all those things moved along. Even if we didn’t defund Planned Parenthood because Paul Ryan as speaker couldn’t get it done, even if we didn’t do some of the things we wanted to do in terms of pro life, we were building the case, building the thing, working right? And ultimately we got to the point where the Supreme Court was conservative.
And then so the final thing, what you need to know, those are the two key things, right? Two key things is the last six years have changed the way we saw abortion, heartbeat bill, others. Second one is the politics and the leadership at this extraordinary pivot in 16, where between McConnell not picking, not allowing a Scalia replacement to be considered, and Trump winning, and then on forward into today, and, and, then we had courage among these justices to do the right thing.
Alito, Thomas, Cavanaugh, Gorsuch, Coney Barrett. Extraordinary courage. I know that’s what they said they were all their life. That’s who they said they were. And they said why and all, but you still have to do it. And I hate to be too cynical, but Chief Justice Roberts was supposed to be a great conservative when he got into office. He’s not quite as fearless. He plays a shorter game. He’s playing a game about the institution, it feels like, instead of about these truths. Extraordinary. And so really amazing to see.
And what you need to know is it’s a historic day. Historic day. And there will probably be violence in certain cities tonight. There’ll probably be some kind of, I saw one of the AP stories that covered at the third paragraph down said, this decision will disproportionately affect minorities.
I don’t know how with a straight face they write that. Someone must have published a study that said that.
But how? Do they mean that it’ll disproportionately affect minority women that want abortion? Or do they mean the minority babies that won’t be killed? Anyway. It’s amazing.
We’ll be watching distortions. We’ll be watching all kinds of things happening, but the history will show that America took off its shoulders this yoke, this yoke of abortion that for 50 years was protected under the law.
That was terrible.
All right, we’ve got to go. We got to go. We got a great show again, I’ve got some guests we’ll cover. But this was the main thrust of it, and I hope you will be paying attention to all these important things and keep praying. We’ll be right back. Ed Martin here in The Pro America Report. Back in a moment.
