Smith: A new opportunity to defend the weakest and most vulnerable from the violence of abortion

New Jersey Globe

By Congressman Christopher H. Smith, June 24 2022

OPINION

For decades—right up to this very moment—abortion advocates have gone to extraordinary lengths to ignore, trivialize, and cover up the battered baby victim.

They’ve aggressively fostered a culture of denial, disrespect, and bias against babies.

The United States Supreme Court’s 7-2 majority in 1973 infamously wrote in Roe v. Wade—that: ‘‘We need not resolve the difficult question of when human life begins.’’ (Page 159)

Sidestepping that fundamental question and giving absolutely no benefit of the doubt to the innate value, dignity and humanity of an unborn child, the Court went on to legalize and facilitate abortion on demand throughout pregnancy.

In 1973, Justice Byron White, joined by Justice Rehnquist, dissented on both extremist pro-abortion decisions and called what the Court did in Doe v. Bolton, the companion decision to Roe,– “an exercise of raw judicial power… an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review…” (footnote 12)

The Alito majority agrees.

Today, at long last, Justice Alito writing for the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has reversed Roe (and Casey) and has returned the power to lawmakers to significantly regulate or even prohibit abortion.

Justice Alito writes: “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives…”

As explained in the opinion, “Our nation’s historical understanding of ordered liberty does not prevent the people’s elected representatives from deciding how abortion should be regulated…The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions.”

The hope and moral imperative to protect innocent children’s lives from extermination couldn’t come a moment too soon.

Since 1973, approximately sixty-three and a half million babies have been brutally killed by abortion in the United States—a loss of children’s lives that equates with the entire population of Italy.

There is nothing humane, compassionate or benign about abortion. Abortion is not healthcare, unless one construes the precious life of an unborn child to be analogous to a tumor to be excised or a disease to be vanquished.

The 1973 Supreme Court anti-child decisions and several that followed like Casey have enabled the violent death of unborn baby girls and boys by dismemberment, decapitation, forced expulsion from the womb, deadly poisons, and other violent methods at any time and for any reason until birth.

History—and science—are on the side of life.

Today, thanks to ultrasound, unborn babies are more visible than ever before.

When a woman is carrying a child, the first baby pictures she proudly shares and often displays on the refrigerator door, are ultrasound photos, of that precious little girl or boy living and thriving in the womb.

Today, science confirms that birth is an event—albeit a very important one—but only an event in the life of a child. It is not the beginning of life.

Modern medicine today treats unborn children with disability or disease as a patient in need of diagnosis and treatment. There has been an explosion in interventions that have saved children’s lives and mitigated many, many problems that they would have faced if the disability had not been treated in-utero.

Meanwhile, in anticipation of today’s decision,  some states like my state of New Jersey have enacted extremist laws that permit aborting a baby—killing a baby—right up to the moment of birth for any reason.

Last September the House of Representative passed  H.R. 3755 to legalize abortion until birth that is, at present, stalled in the Senate.

These policies pose an existential threat to the well-being and lives of innocent children.

If enacted, the House-passed bill will not only permit abortion until birth, but would nullify nearly every modest pro-life restriction ever enacted by the States, including Women’s Right to Know laws in 35 States, parental involvement statute in 37 States, the pain-capable unborn child protection laws in 19 States, waiting periods in 26 States, and so much more.

Unborn babies are society’s youngest patients and deserve benign, life-affirming medical interventions. Modern medicine treats unborn children with disability or disease as a patient in need of diagnosis and treatment.

All unborn babies deserve protection not death by abortion. Unborn babies and their mothers need support; we need to love and help them both.

There has been an explosion in interventions that have saved children’s lives and mitigated many, many problems that they may face when the disability, for example, was not caught early.

Now, more than ever, women and men of conscience must act to protect the weakest and most vulnerable.

For decades—right up to this very moment—abortion advocates have gone to extraordinary lengths to ignore, trivialize, and cover up the battered baby victim.

They’ve aggressively fostered a culture of denial, disrespect and bias against babies.

The United States Supreme Court’s 7-2 majority in 1973 infamously wrote in Roe v. Wade—that: ‘‘We need not resolve the difficult question of when human life begins.’’ (Page 159)

Sidestepping that fundamental question and giving absolutely no benefit of the doubt to the innate value, dignity and humanity of an unborn child, the Court went on to legalize and facilitate abortion on demand throughout pregnancy.

In 1973, Justice Byron White, joined by Justice Rehnquist, dissented on both extremist pro-abortion decisions and called what the Court did in Doe v. Bolton, the companion decision to Roe,– “an exercise of raw judicial power… an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review…” (footnote 12)

The Alito majority agrees.

Today, at long last, Justice Alito writing for the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has reversed Roe ( and Casey)and has returned the power to lawmakers to significantly regulate or even prohibit abortion.

Justice Alito writes: “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives…”

As explained in the opinion, “Our nation’s historical understanding of ordered liberty does not prevent the people’s elected representatives from deciding how abortion should be regulated…The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions.”

The hope and moral imperative to protect innocent children’s lives from extermination couldn’t come a moment too soon.

Since 1973, approximately sixty-three and a half million babies have been brutally killed by abortion in the United States—a loss of children’s lives that equates with the entire population of Italy.

There is nothing humane, compassionate or benign about abortion. Abortion is not healthcare, unless one construes the precious life of an unborn child to be analogous to a tumor to be excised or a disease to be vanquished.

The 1973 Supreme Court anti-child decisions and several that followed like Casey have enabled the violent death of unborn baby girls and boys by dismemberment, decapitation, forced expulsion from the womb, deadly poisons, and other violent methods at any time and for any reason until birth.

History—and science—are on the side of life.

Today, thanks to ultrasound, unborn babies are more visible than ever before.

When a woman is carrying a child, the first baby pictures she proudly shares and often displays on the refrigerator door, are ultrasound photos, of that precious little girl or boy living and thriving in the womb.

Today, science confirms that birth is an event—albeit a very important one—but only an event in the life of a child. It is not the beginning of life.

Modern medicine today treats unborn children with disability or disease as a patient in need of diagnosis and treatment. There has been an explosion in interventions that have saved children’s lives and mitigated many, many problems that they would have faced if the disability had not been treated in-utero.

Meanwhile, in anticipation of today’s decision,  some states like my state of New Jersey have  enacted extremist laws that permit aborting a baby—killing a baby—right up to the moment of birth for any reason.

Last September the House of Representative passed  H.R. 3755 to legalize abortion until birth that is, at present, stalled in the Senate.

These policies pose an existential threat to the well-being and lives of innocent children.

If enacted, the House-passed bill will not only permit abortion until birth, but would nullify nearly every modest pro-life restriction ever enacted by the States, including Women’s Right to Know laws in 35 States, parental involvement statute in 37 States, the pain-capable unborn child protection laws in 19 States, waiting periods in 26 States, and so much more.

Unborn babies are society’s youngest patients and deserve benign, life-affirming medical interventions. Modern medicine treats unborn children with disability or disease as a patient in need of diagnosis and treatment.

All unborn babies deserve protection not death by abortion. Unborn babies and their mothers need support; we need to love and help them both.

There has been an explosion in interventions that have saved children’s lives and mitigated many, many problems that they may face when the disability, for example, was not caught early.

Now, more than ever, women and men of conscience must act to protect the weakest and most vulnerable.