"First, a pro-life strategy of compromise—rather than principle—has failed to convince the public or the courts. This offers the opportunity to refocus our efforts on the ultimate goal of the pro-life movement. Second, Republican judicial nominations have failed to overturn unconstitutional pro-abortion precedents and have even contributed to them. This offers the opportunity to eschew blind partisanship and to create constructive social tension that prompts political change. And third, our constitutional system has failed to constrain the judiciary. This offers the opportunity for lesser magistrates to resist unjust edicts.
"An honest assessment of these failures and opportunities should convince those who are committed to the pro-life cause that the time has come to stop compromising. We must demand that our political leaders end the legally sanctioned killing of unborn children....
"Traditional wisdom (and Gallup polling) suggested that only 15 to 20 percent of Americans would support a total abortion ban, but more than twice that many actually voted in various states to recognize the personhood of the preborn and ban abortion....
"Instead of relying on vague language about women’s health and safety as they seek to kill their children or on the argument that some preborn children feel pain, we need to refocus the pro-life message on the inherent dignity of the human person from conception to natural death. We must take active steps to protect preborn children by love and by law, without exception or compromise....
"While it’s true that the three justices who would return the question of abortion to the voters have been appointed by Republican presidents, it’s also true that Republicans have appointed even more justices who think the Constitution requires abortion. Think of Stevens, Souter, O’Connor, and Kennedy....
"We must be unrelenting, so that purportedly pro-life candidates, pastors, priests, and persons of influence cannot comfortably coexist with legalized abortion....
"We are no longer a nation governed by laws rather than by men. As Justice Thomas said in his Hellerstedt dissent (quoting Justice Scalia), 'we have passed the point where "law," properly speaking, has any further application'....
"The Supreme Court has long since undermined its own legitimacy as a fair and neutral arbiter. Last year’s ruling in Obergefell, as well as so many others, have exposed the Court as nothing more than another political branch—a robed oligarchy that has unconstitutionally aggrandized itself through the false doctrine of judicial supremacy and cloaked its unconstrained willfulness in the language of law.
"Our Founding Fathers understood that judicial supremacy was incompatible with the preservation of self-government....When judicial supremacy is combined with an utter disregard for our constitutional text, the 'supreme law of the land' becomes nothing more than the fiat of five lawyers....
"Just as Lincoln denied the force of the Dred Scott decision
to settle the question of black citizenship, so too must state governors
and other officials who have sworn oaths to uphold our Constitution
deny the force of the Supreme Court opinions to settle the question of
preborn humanity. Governors in particular should reassert the rightful
status of their states in our federal system and take action to protect
every innocent human being in their jurisdictions. We should encourage
officials to stand against the judiciary’s unlawful and unjust decrees
and rally behind those who do" (Josh Craddock, SCOTUS and Abortion: Three Failures and Opportunities for the Pro-Life Movement, Public Discourse, 7/1/16).
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