What a Year This Has Been!

Remember back in 2020 how we kept commenting on how weird things were in the world? People put up memes about apocalypse bingo. We still think of that as a landmark weird year. But we never got fully back to normal. Things just keep reeling out of control.

But what we could say is that 2022 is the year of “I told you so.” Of course we wouldn’t actually say that, because it’s considered bad form. But there are some stories we had absolutely right in 2020 that were marked, banned, and censored as “misinformation,” as though putting out an opinion on social media was a dangerous thing. Then this year, one after another, those stories we knew were true in 2020 but that were squelched are now admitted as true. Here’s a brief list:

·       The Hunter Biden laptop is real—it’s authentic, it shows the corruption of the Biden family—as we first mentioned in 2019, and the laptop verified in 2020, well ahead of the election, if only the public had been allowed to see it. So far no investigations or arrests are underway.

·       The COVID-19 “vaccines” were neither safe nor effective—nor qualified as vaccines. Now even the public is aware of the dangers, particularly to young people, through myocarditis, blood clots, lowered immune function, and more. So far the government continues to fearmonger and pretend we don't know what we know. And, suddenly China is suffering high death rates despite low death rates elsewhere worldwide.

·       Meanwhile, care such as increasing Vitamin D, zinc, and other supplements can be helpful, as can early treatment with formerly widely available and safe drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, if you can get them now. But best of all is natural immunity, which most people now have—with the nonvaccinated benefitting more than the vaccinated. Oh, and masks never did work.

·       Elections in 2020 were corrupt beyond belief. Elections since then, even under closer scrutiny, continue to be corrupt. So far lawsuits are thwarted, and evidence is ignored.

There are plenty of other similar and related stories that we knew all along were true, even though we could be cancelled for saying so.

I wrote fewer posts this year. Most years, writing twice weekly, I would produce around 100 posts. This year I was down to around 60. Some posts were so long, it still added up; my apologies. But schedule changes in my life leave me struggling to get in one day a week dedicated to this blog. However, that means it was a bit easier to look at everything I wrote this year and catalog it into categories, some of which I’ll share today as a summary of the year at the Spherical Model.

I spent a lot of time this year actively involved in good citizenship. I worked at the polls during four elections. I worked on a primary campaign. Then I worked several months straight on district platform and then state platform. About a quarter of this year’s blog posts were related to those local and state political activities; I’m leaving those out of the list below, but they’re still available of course in the archives. 

Some posts cover more than one category. That’s the nature of interrelated ideas. But I do feel like this was a good body of work for such a weird year. The first two categories, Constitution vs. Tyranny and Philosophy and Culture, are related to political philosophy, which is what the Spherical Model is. The others, which also relate to the Spherical Model—because everything political, economic or cultural does—are more topical.

There was good news related to abortion, freeing us from being a total nation under condemnation, although that fight at the state level is now just underway. And there was disturbing news of a war in Ukraine, still ongoing. I have found it confusing from the beginning, because of unreliable news sources, and have mostly stayed out of the discussion. But I have not approved of the many billions of taxpayer dollars spent there, in a corrupt country with known corrupt ties to the Biden family. And this week it was announced that Ukraine President Zelensky is closely tied to the World Economic Forum—the ones who want to collapse the world economy to start over, using a model that allows them to control all the people, in admiration of the China model. I feel bad for the people in Ukraine, as I do any people suffering under corrupt and/or tyrannical leadership.

Election Integrity is a bigger story. So is censorship, with some of the collusion between government and Big Tech coming out in the Twitter files, after the purchase by Elon Musk. “Woke” policies being pushed on our children continues to be a big story.

I think people are waking up to what has been going on. What is not clear is whether waking up and finding themselves in a post-constitutional tyranny allows the suddenly awakened to do anything about their plight. But I do believe that, if good people have their free will taken away, that’s not something God will long tolerate. I hope we are good enough to merit His rescue. As I occasionally repeat, “Hosanna!” which means “come and rescue.”

I hope you’ll enjoy the year-end review.

 

Constitution vs. Tyranny

Howard Chandler Christy's "Scene at the Signing of
the Constitution of the United States"
image found on Wikipedia

·        June 6, 2022: People Really Mean It: No More Tyranny

·        July 21, 2022: Famine by Design

·        August 11, 2022: We Agree; We Don't Want Authoritarian Rule

·        September 5, 2022: The Existential Threat

·        September 12, 2022: Who Should Have the Helm

·        September 15, 2022: Our Miraculous Constitution

·        October 13, 2022: Our Constitutional Republic Has Suddenly Become a Fascist Tyranny

·        October 25, 2022: Public Speaking [video presentation explaining the Spherical Model]

Joe Biden gives anti-Republican speech,
September 2, 2022
image found as screenshot here

 

Philosophy and Culture

·        January 3, 2022: Be It Resolved

·        April 7, 2022: Nihilism Is Not a Life Plan

·        April 14, 2022: All Things Testify of Him

·        July 28, 2022: Changing the World One Job at a Time

·        December 12, 2022: Anticipating the Messiah

 

Election Integrity

·        March 7, 2022: When Does Incompetence Become Cover for Intentional Wrongdoing

illustration of someone mailing multiple ballots,
found in this August 29, 2020, New York Post article

·        May 12, 2022: Chain-of-Custody Issues

·        July 19, 2022: No One Sits at Home on Election Day

·        July 25, 2022: Deterrence, Prevention, and Real-Time Intervention

·        November 11, 2022: We Are at War

·        November 21, 2022: Election Debacle Report

 

Abortion

March for Life 2022
Getty image 

·        January 24, 2022: Maybe This Will Be the Year

·        May 5, 2022: Abomination in Our Nation

·        July 7, 2022: SCOTUS Has Ended Life as We Know It—For the Better

·        August 4, 2022: Pregnancy Resource Centers Aren’t the Ones Faking Care

·        September 29, 2022: Words of the Unwise

 

Censorship and News

image is a screenshot from this Facts Matter video

·        April 29, 2022: Of Course They Want to Control Our Speech

·        May 3, 2022: Misinformation, Disinformation, Malinformation—and Censorship

·        June 9, 2022: Two Movies You Couldn’t Make Again

·        July 15, 2022: Power Mongering

·        August 8, 2022: Good News among the Bad

·        August 15, 2022: Unprecedented

·        August 25, 2022: Let Me Put You on Hold

·        December 1, 2022: The Threat

 

COVID-19

strange clots found by embalmers
screenshot from here

·        January 10, 2022: So Many Things They Know That Aren’t So [also updates on January 6]

·        January 28, 2022: Charts and Other Info

·        February 3, 2022: Evil Enough for You

·        July 12, 2022: Putting the Pieces Together

·        September 8, 2022: News from the Front Lines

·        December 15, 2022: It’s Over

 

Schools—CRT and LGBTQ Agendas

Matt Walsh speaks with Masai tribesmen to ask them,
"What is a woman?" screenshot from here

·        January 14, 2022: Hearing They Hear Not, Neither Do They Understand

·        January 17, 2022: Oppression Is Evil

·        April 4, 2022: Take the Money and Run—Or Just Run

·        April 18, 2022: Local School-Related Irreconcilable Differences

·        April 21, 2022: Schools Are Not Families

 

War in Ukraine—Geopolitics

map found here

·        March 3, 2022: Fools Rush In

·        March 10, 2022: What’s Going On?

 

Economics and Public Policy

·        August 29, 2022: Stopping Crime

·        October 6, 2022: How Much Is $31 Trillion

Pregnancy Resource Centers Aren’t the Ones Faking Care

Elizabeth Warren recently pushed for legislation to shut down pregnancy resource centers in her state. She said:

In Massachusetts, right now, those crisis pregnancy centers that are there to fool people who are looking for pregnancy termination help outnumber true abortion clinics by 3 to 1. We need to shut them down here in Massachusetts. And we need to shut them down all around the country. 

Senator Warren is angry that pregnancy resource centers
are allowed to exist in her world, where she thinks the only
choice ought to be abortion. Screenshot from here.

Such centers may outnumber abortion clinics 3 to 1 in Massachusetts, but they’re 4 to 1 in most of the country. They are not, however, there to fool people looking for an abortion; they are there to help women facing an unexpected pregnancy—usually because they’re young, unmarried, and without resources, and they don’t know what to do.

There is only one answer at an abortion clinic: get an abortion.

At a pregnancy resource center there is medical help, pregnancy information, connection to government and private charity resources, help in deciding between choosing adoption or raising the child. They get resources either way—even on up through perinatal care and getting housing and baby clothing and supplies.

None of these choices is available at the place where they call themselves pro-choice.

This past Tuesday there was an issue on the ballot in Kentucky, a pro-life amendment, called “Value Them Both,” intended to clarify the state constitution—in which some judge “found” a right to abortion in 2019. The amendment would have meant the legislature could regulate abortion, now that the Dobbs decision gave that authority back to the states.

But the amendment failed. By about 17 percentage points. In a state that on the surface looks fairly conservative. Trump won the state by 15 points in 2020.

Pro-life spokesperson Mallory Carroll said:

The abortion lobby’s message to voters was rife with lies that ultimately drowned out the truth. Because of tonight’s results, Kansas could shortly become home to unrestricted abortion on demand—even late-term abortion without limits, paid for by taxpayers. The people and their elected legislators now have no recourse to use the tools of democracy to enact laws that reflect consensus.

The pro-abortion lobby has been gathering funding—including at taxpayer expense—for decades. They had millions to throw at this issue, the first on the ballot since the Dobbs decision.

Polling shows that nationwide most people want to severely limit abortion but worry about removing exemptions for the life of the mother, and also for victims of rape and incest. Since well before the SCOTUS ruling in June, the pro-abortion lobby has been claiming everything means forcing women to die and have no recourse regardless of circumstances—“It’s all A Handmaid’s Tale in real life!” they cry.

If you're wondering where your state now stands, check out the interactive map provided by the ACLJ.

for the ACLJ's interactive map on current abortion laws, go here

I can’t tell you exactly what lies were told in Kentucky, but I imagine they’re similar to lies being told in Texas. One is that women won’t get care for an ectopic pregnancy. Not true. Termination of that type of pregnancy has never been defined as an abortion—because the embryo is never implanted in the uterus; it cannot mature and become a baby, and is a high risk to the mother’s life. Nothing about outlawing abortion affects that.

There was a recent story of a woman whose baby died in utero, and she claimed that the doctors wouldn’t treat her until she had undergone multiple ultrasounds verifying that the child was not alive. And she was forced to keep carrying a dead fetus for two weeks. How can I say this without hurting someone’s feelings? She lied. That is not the procedure for a fetus that dies, and the procedure did not change after the Dobbs decision meant abortion was outlawed in Texas.

Once it is verified that there is no heartbeat, the baby is delivered, likely by C-section. This is not an abortion, because it does not terminate the life of the unborn baby, which has already died. Leaving a dead baby to degenerate within the mother could lead to serious consequences for the mother, possibly sepsis. Even in this story, simply having a second ultrasound to verify that there was no heartbeat was all that was needed; she could have come in the next day, and her doctor probably told her that. He probably mentioned nothing about the change in law after Dobbs—because there was no change. Anyway, at most it would be mere days before the procedure is done.

This was the unfortunate circumstance of a friend of mine just last month (post-Dobbs)—a mother of many children, who wanted the child, and who would never consider an abortion. She learned the child no longer had a heartbeat; she scheduled and had a C-section; she is in the process of healing both physically and emotionally. The family held a graveside service for the lost child—just as we had done for our child who had been born alive prematurely and lived only a few hours.

People are worried about the loss of choice for women who are victims of rape or incest—in other words, who did not choose the behavior that led to the pregnancy. I understand that. But it is already the exception in most states that outlaw abortion, and is an appropriate debate to have in the legislature. It’s not currently an exception in Texas—only life of the mother, I believe. And I think if we better informed and better supported women in that rare circumstance, people would clamor much less about it.

I’ve always been pro-life. Yet I have always assumed there would be exceptions made for the life of the mother—which in most cases means that the baby can’t survive either, so it is a matter of saving the mother’s life or no one’s. My Church actually makes exceptions for rape and incest, in addition to life of the mother. So I have been open to the conversation concerning those exceptions. I’ve been concerned that, as a society, we do not well support a woman who has suffered rape. We don’t even do a very good job of tracking down and bringing the rapist to justice. And I thought giving her no way out of propagating the seed of the rapist would lengthen and possibly intensify her trauma. I’m beginning to rethink that exception.

A friend of mine phone coaches women finding themselves pregnant and unable to support themselves, let alone a baby. She has been there, in crisis. I’ll briefly (and anonymously) tell her story, and what she taught me. She was fifteen and pregnant, with her 18-year-old alcoholic boyfriend. He offered no support. His mother pressured her to get an abortion; the woman had been a teen mom of two and knew how bad that was going to be.

My friend comes from a dysfunctional family, to say the least. Her parents had broken up when she was two. Her mother remarried when she was seven, to an abuser. My friend suffered sexual abuse from a series of abusers. She lacked protection and direction. The mother had taken them to church sporadically, so she had a surface knowledge of religion. My friend actually prayed, not really knowing who she was praying to, that she and her boyfriend could marry and have this family. But that wasn’t going to happen with this young man.

Not knowing what to do, she gave in to the pressure and went to an abortion clinic. Right away they put in a cervical dilator; she was supposed to go back the next day for the abortion. This insertion was painful, and it scared her. She went home and told her mother she was getting an abortion. Her mother was upset and to told her not to do it, and she agreed; she didn’t want to go through with it. She called her OB about the cervical dilator, to get it out, and was told it was probably too late; it would cause a miscarriage. Years later she learned this was not necessarily true, but she was a 15-year-old scared little girl, looking for help from adult experts who weren’t helping. She told her mom she had no choice now but to go through with it, and her mother told her not to come home if she did.

The boyfriend got drunk the night before and bailed on even taking her to the clinic. So her “friend” who had been having sex with her boyfriend behind her back ended up taking her. She remembers two vivid things about that clinic experience: the extremely sharp pain when her baby was dismembered and ripped from her; and the horrible sucking sounds and noise of the vacuum machine.

There were after effects. As she recalls,

Because I was still in the dark literally, a friend later took me to Planned Parenthood for birth control pills. They gave me a year’s worth of pills. The doctor didn’t know my medical history and probably didn’t care (and they failed to disclose the risks of the pill, that the WHO has it classified as a Class 1 Carcinogen, or how being abstinent could have really helped me emotionally and physically). I tried to tell myself that it was okay, but I knew deep down it was not okay—I was not okay. Physically, I worried if I would ever be able to have children. Had the abortion made me barren? Emotionally, I felt such shame and regret. Spiritually, I felt so ashamed that I thought God would never forgive me and I would be punished for the evil I committed. My boyfriend and I broke up, and I stuffed everything deep down inside and tried to pretend it didn’t happen, and no one spoke of it.

There’s more they don’t tell you at these places. She adds:

One of the things the pro-choice people never tell you is that when you become pregnant you are already a mom and that an abortion doesn’t take care of your problem; it actually stays with you the rest of your life. You are the mom of a dead child, and you can never undo that. Women that endure abortion suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. When you look at the symptoms—difficulty concentrating, depression, anger, anxiety, fear, being unable to sleep—numbing yourself with drugs and alcohol trying to forget the most horrible thing ever that has ever happened, it doesn’t work.

The abortion didn’t get rid of her problems. She continued drinking and doing drugs, and got pregnant again at 19; the father, again, was an abusive alcoholic. But this time when pressured to abort the baby, she knew she would never do that again. Off and on she hoped to form a family with the father, but again that wasn’t going to work, and she ended the contact. But having that baby girl, at age 20, gave her a new purpose in life, and led to her connection with God, which changed everything.

She thought that with a past like hers, she would probably never marry and have any more children. But good fortune came her way at 25. And she has spent the next couple of decades living a totally different family life than the one she grew up in.

I’m interested in the detail she told me about knowing she had this child that died, that should be in her life, or at least should be alive. There’s a hole there, and it is never filled. Because I have lost a child, I know what that feels like.

Hers was different from a rape case. But she has since had quite a lot of experience with rape victims. That missing child is what they experience after an abortion as well. What they have is the trauma of rape, and on top of that they experience the trauma of a dead child—that hole that is never filled. No one warns them. They get told, “Let’s just get rid of that problem for you.” But it doesn’t solve the problem; it adds another one that may be even more traumatic.

There was another story, told on Glenn Beck’s program back in May (May 4, 2022), by a black woman, Shemeka Michelle, who is pro-life but had had an abortion. Her story was that, while she had always been pro-life, she was with a man she should not have been with. They already had a child together, and he was not a good father, or provider, or protector. Before she succeeded in leaving him, she found herself pregnant again. His mother told her to go ahead with an abortion but not tell the father—because he was against abortion but would be as shiftless and irresponsible as he had ever been. She was about seven weeks pregnant. She asked the doctor what she would see on an ultrasound, and he told her she’d see nothing; it was just a clump of cells.

Shameka Michelle tells her story on the Glenn Beck Program, May 4, 2022
screenshot from here

She went on with her life, and then some years later was pregnant under better conditions, within a good marriage. She had an ultrasound at about that same point in the pregnancy. The happy technician showed her the baby, with heartbeat, and head and arms and legs. It should have been a happy life event—and it was. But it was also a shocking awareness that the baby she had aborted years before was not a clump of cells; it was a growing human being, like this one she was pregnant with.

She believes that if she had been told the truth the first time, she would not have had the abortion. And she believes—and data bears this out—most women, if they were shown a good quality ultrasound of their living baby, they would not abort. Knowing it is a baby, and not just a clump of cells, makes a huge difference to a pregnant woman.

Pro-abortionists do not care for women in difficult circumstances; they prey on them. And they are working hard to prevent anyone from having real choices.

Pregnancy Resource Centers, on the other hand, offer young women actual help and hope, without inflicting further trauma on them. We need more of these. 

While we're at it, we need more intact families that teach their children right from wrong. And we need more cultural support for young women—and young men—to stay committed to abstinence before marriage and complete fidelity within marriage. Age-old truths are still true.

Abomination in Our Nation

On Monday a draft opinion was leaked from the Supreme Court. Leaks from the Supreme Court are extremely rare, and in the past have been limited to someone saying what a final ruling outcome was going to be. There has never been a leak of a brief—in the entire history of the Court.

image of the Supreme Court leaked draft opinion
screenshot from Glenn Beck's Wednesday Special

 

The Betrayal of Trust

Justice Roberts verified on Tuesday that the leaked draft was authentic. He pointed out that it was still an early draft—it is from early February—and is part of how the Court works through their opinions; it represents neither the final opinion of any justice nor the final ruling. He also calls the leak a betrayal. There is speculation on what that means to the perpetrator when caught, but is likely to include firing at minimum, probably losing their law license for life, and possibly criminal charges for mishandling private court documents.

Law vlogger Robert Gouveia shared a couple of tweets that indicate the seriousness of this betrayal of trust. One is from SCOUTUSblog. It says,

It’s impossible to overstate the earthquake this will cause inside the Court, in terms of the destruction of trust among the Justices and staff. This leak is the gravest, most unforgivable sin.

Robert Gouveia shares a SCOTUSblog tweet
screenshot from here

The other tweet Gouveia shares is from @OrinKerr, passed on to him from @isamuel, who had clerked for Justice Scalia, who tells this story (which I found linked to here) of welcome day for new clerks:

But nothing will ever beat Justice Scalia on probably the first day that all four law clerks had started. He summoned us all in and said, “Welcome aboard. I’m really happy to have you. Here’s how I run my chambers. It’s an open door—if you need to talk to me about something, just come and talk to me.” And he said, almost with a hint of regret that he had to do this—obviously he was not that regretful, because he did do it—he said, “I want to just emphasize something, and I only want to say it once. If I ever discover that you have betrayed the confidences of what goes on in these chambers, I will do everything in my power to ruin your career.” Then he just let that hang there for a second, and moved on to other topics. It wasn’t said in a mean way, but it also wasn’t said in a way that admitted the slightest misunderstanding. He certainly did not sound like he was even a little bit kidding. Again, at the time, I’m a twentysomething-year-old lawyer. This is Justice Antonin Scalia. It does not require his power to ruin my career. The amount of power in his pinky finger was quite sufficient. So as a result, I was never tempted to betray his confidences and I doubt I ever will be. He only said it once, and other than that was quite a genial boss. But in that one moment, you really got the sense that he was serious.   

If each justice has about four clerks, the number of people with access to the document was quite limited. It should not be impossible to discover who leaked it. Trust is gone, severely limiting the normal functioning of the Supreme Court, until the leaker if found and removed.

Oddly, the story being talked about in media and by the Biden administration is ignoring this man-bites-dog level of out-of-the-ordinary leak. It is concentrating only on the contents of the leaked document.

 

The Pressure Campaign

The document is the draft majority opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, on the Dobbs case. That’s regarding the Tennessee law prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks. Tennessee asked the Supreme Court to consider reversing Roe and Casey as they determine whether the Tennessee law was constitutional. The opinion is close to a hundred pages long, carefully and accurately detailing the wrongness of Roe and Casey.

This should be no surprise to anyone. First of all, the Court chose to take up the case; that showed a willingness to consider the issue. Second, we all heard the oral arguments in December. Third, we have known Alito to be a reliable conservative on the Court likely to go this direction.

The process of the Court is to circulate and exchange opinions. Then the other justices decide whether they concur in full or in part. They may like an outcome but prefer to emphasize a different line of reasoning. Or they may dissent, and then write their dissenting opinion based on refuting the arguments in the majority opinion. Or they could be persuaded by the arguments another justice makes and actually change their opinion.

What the leak has led to, however, is an opportunity for the pro-abortion crowd to stir up emotion, fear, and pressure—in the hopes of persuading a justice or two to change their positions—more out of fear than persuasive argument or even a sense that the country is against such a ruling. This includes fear for their lives and the lives of their families—which means that people whose goal is to kill as many babies in the womb as they possibly can might also be willing to kill older humans.

By the way, the American people may have some mixed ideas about whether Roe should be overturned, but they are definitely not in step with this pro-abortion-under-all-circumstances-up-until-birth mob that’s doing so much wailing and teeth gnashing. Stu Burguire shows some statistics on his show from polling. 

stats shown on Stu Burguiere's show
screenshot from here

more polling data shown on Stu Burguiere's show
screenshot from here

What If…

If Roe and Casey are overturned, what does that mean? It means that, because the Constitution is silent on abortion, it is a decision to be left to the states. I believe there is—and always has been—an argument on the pro-life side that the life of the pre-born deserves protection under the Constitution. There are places in law where that life is protected, and taking that life is punished as murder; but calling it abortion and pretending that it is a woman’s healthcare choice has muddied the clear understanding. So now it is better to give the decision back to the states than to dictate from Washington.

If states are to be able to make the decision, they will make varied decisions—as do most of the nations in the world, only a few of which (the ugliest regimes, as it happens) allow abortion as freely as the US has.

We know much more about the growing fetus than was known at the time of Roe. That it is a life, well before viability. Viability is getting ever earlier. And, in fact, there’s already a heartbeat as early as six weeks. Logically, biologically, there is a growing person with their own identifiable DNA from conception on. Growth is a sign of life. And the DNA shows it is not only human life, but a unique individual person.

Casey set aside the 3-trimester/3-rules system invented in the Roe decision, giving a nod to the viability standard but mostly ignoring the “when does the life of a baby become important?” question and switched to the “undue burden” standard. States could regulate abortion—as long as they didn’t create an undue burden on that woman who was planning to kill her pre-born child.

Without Roe and Casey, states where people value life will become free to limit or eliminate abortion. States where people want to keep killing the pre-born will be able to do that. California has already volunteered itself as an abortion destination, with free flights to their state to kill your baby. New York is likely to continue killing more babies than are born. No one will be more than a two-hour plane trip from an abortion clinic. And you can assume there will be nonprofits willing to pay for those trips. So, all those cries of desperation and deprivation for women are unfounded.

It's hard to say whether this change will prevent any abortions. It certainly won’t prevent any of the determined ones. But maybe it will prevent some of the hesitating ones—the ones where a young woman is scared and uncertain and asks for help and relief, and instead of getting good information and encouragement to seek alternatives, she is pushed into having an abortion. Those might be prevented.

When the mobbing crowds show up with their coat hangers and printed posters to protest in front of the Supreme Court, they’re hyperbolic and emotional—on purpose. For what a Disinformation Governance Board ought to see clearly as disinformation, but of course won’t.

Elizabeth Warren, in a raging rant about Roe,
made the rounds, but I go this screenshot
from Glenn Beck's Wednesday special

What was Elizabeth Warren so suddenly upset about in her major meltdown? She has known since early December that something like the Alito draft would be circulating within the Court, and that a ruling could go that way. She’s not shocked. The outrage is dialed up on purpose.

There’s a larger goal. Use this issue. Use it to try to push forth legislation to “codify Roe.” That’s the claim, although they’re throwing out that “viability” standard entirely and planning to enforce abortion up to the moment of first breath outside the womb—or maybe beyond. They’ll push that through by claiming it’s about a woman’s body—ignoring the little person whose life they’re snuffing out. And they will need to eliminate the filibuster in order to push through something so at odds with what most of the American people want. And, since they’re eliminating the filibuster, then they can push through other things, like court packing; i.e., adding more partisan justices to the Supreme Court.

They already have the legislation ready for a vote next week. That doesn’t mean they’ll get it. But it does mean they had this planned for a while and were waiting for the right moment.

Yesterday the ACLJ mentioned on their podcast that Politico, the outlet that leaked the memo, had given the administration a heads up about their plan days ahead of Monday. Probably they were asking for comment for their article. But that advanced notice is why you could see printed signs and large crowds appearing outside the Court building almost immediately after the news came out.

 

The Ruling Is Just the Beginning

If the SCOTUS ruling goes through as we hope, then the battle—or rather many more local battles—will begin in the states. In some states that means outlawing most or all abortions. Here in Texas we have a trigger law, saying that, if Roe is reversed, abortion is illegal in Texas except to save the life of the mother. This trigger law wasn’t actually necessary, because Texas law prior to Roe is still on the books, and that outlawed abortion in the state.

Some other states may limit abortions and regulate clinics. Other states, unfortunately, will allow them under all the conditions they have been doing them for some time—or maybe worse.

But it would take the condemnation for this abomination off the American people as a whole. Some states would remain condemned by God. But some states—and the people in them—could fight successfully for the life of the not-yet-born. And we could fight for the souls of women in crisis, who don’t want to be Moloch worshippers, but are led to that path with the lie that it’s easy and there’s no other choice.

Glenn Beck shared this tweet and image of Moloch on his
Wednesday special. Moloch worship meant they could
engage in any debauchery they wanted, and all they had
to do was sacrifice their children. Sounds familiar.

Pro-abortion people are not pro-choice. They do not want any state to make a different choice. They do not want any woman to get the information that might cause her to make a different choice. Pro-abortion people want to force their depravity on all of society—and coerce society to pay for the abomination with their taxes. This is an all-out war of evil against good. Spoiler alert: Good wins. But in the meantime there’s going to be a crazy amount of evil thrashing around in desperation. That’s what we’re seeing.

Maybe This Will Be the Year

This past weekend was the annual March for Life in Washington, DC. There’s a different air this year. There’s hope, almost anticipation, that this might be the last year that the March goes on with Roe v. Wade as the law of the land.

March for Life 2022
Getty image found here

Marjorie Jackson, at the beginning of the prolifecon.org broadcast of the Family Research Council, done parallel to the March for Life, gave this introduction:

Today is the 17th Annual ProLifeCon Digital Action Summit here at Family Research Council. As well as the somber anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion on demand through nine months of pregnancy. Thank you for joining us as we fight for the unborn. This year the March for Life feels a little different. This could possibly be our last year under Roe v. Wade legalized. Hope is in the air.

Kirk Cameron, actor and Christian, was at the March for Life and gave an interview to Fox News,which was passed along by The Daily Wire.  He said, “I think that we’re at a tipping point. I think that the tide is turning, science is making it more and more difficult for us to pretend like it’s not a baby in the womb. We know that it is.” Cameron's wife was adopted. Their first four children were adopted. They’ve been on the side of life a long time. As he put it, his wife—and each of those first four children—were “one doctor appointment away from not existing.” He adds, about his wife, “She was not a mistake; she was a miracle.” His whole family exists because mothers chose life.

He also thinks there’s a sea change happening in the culture. He says, “Even in Hollywood, there are more and more people who are embracing the idea that life is a gift from God.”

Some of the optimism this particular year stems from the oral arguments before the Supreme Court in early December. We went through some of the details then. But as Mary Zach, co-host on the ProLifeCon broadcast, summed it up: “It is about changing hearts and minds as well.” Maybe the law is ready to change now, because the people are ready to change. Not all people, but a growing majority.

Katherine Beck Johnson, Fellow for Legal and Policy Studies at FRC, was given time on that broadcast to offer an overview of what Dobbs v. Jackson was all about.

Katherine Beck Johnson, ProLifeCon broadcast
screenshot from here

KBJ: Dobbs is an incredibly consequential case. It is the biggest abortion case of our generation, the biggest abortion case since Casey in 1992.

Mississippi passed a 15-week abortion ban. This is by no means a radical pro-life law. But it was struck down as it is unconstitutional under Roe, which prevents any sort of pre-viability ban on abortion. And this was struck down at the district court and the 5^th Circuit as unconstitutional. Mississippi then petitioned the Supreme Court to take the case.

Now, the Supreme Court could have just issued a statement saying, "This is clearly unconstitutional under Roe. We agree with the 5^th Circuit.” But they took the case, signaling they might be willing to do something to alter abortion jurisprudence in America.

It was then taken up another notch when Mississippi filed their briefs, and they didn’t just simply ask the Court to uphold their 15-week ban. They went after Roe. They called Roe out for what it is, a disgrace to our nation and to our constitutional law. And they requested that the Court overturn Roe. So, therefore, the case now really before the Supreme Court is whether or not Roe should be overturned and abortion should return to the states. So, like I said, this is a hugely consequential case, and we look forward to the decision that comes down in, hopefully, June.

Later in the discussion, she covered more details of the justices’ questions, and why we have reason to be so hopeful:

KBJ: While it’s hard to always read the tea leaves of what the justices will do from oral arguments, we took a lot of encouragement from the questions being asked, especially from Justice Roberts, who has become quite the swing vote. He really talked about and probed, well, isn’t America an outlier in our abortion jurisprudence? Why are we just in the camp of North Korea and China in our protections of the unborn?

Justice Kavanaugh, who’s also become another swing vote, said himself, "Well, shouldn’t this just be left up to the states?" He said that in response to a growing movement within the pro-life movement that the unborn are actually protected under the 14th Amendment, and that the Constitution forbids abortion, and this should not be left up to the states…. So, we really particularly look to the swing voters on the Court and what they were saying.

And then Justice Alito, who basically closed it out, talking to the United States Solicitor General, Elizabeth [Prelogar], who is of course advocating that the Mississippi law be struck down, and as she was continuously talking about the rights of the woman, he said boldly, “Well, doesn’t the fetus have an interest in living?” And I thought that was just so profound, that here we had a justice willing to say, “What about the rights of the unborn child?”

Another guest on that broadcast was pro-life activist Alyson Centofonte, who had MC-ed the event in front of the Supreme Court during oral arguments. She described some differences in the crowds:

Alyson Centofonte, ProLifeCon
broadcast, screenshot from here

No one [on the pro-abortion side] actually had a very empowering message of supporting women and moms and families. There were no children there that I saw. There were no dads that I saw.

On our rally we had female legislators with their husbands and babies in tow. It’s very empowering to see.

So, I think the shift that is taking place is that the pro-life movement has been so successful at having a consistent message that women and families should be supported in law and society. And that’s really refreshing to a young woman who’s in an unplanned pregnancy and scared. Because, we need to hear, we all need to hear that, “You can do this; we will be with you; we’ll stand with you.” That’s what the pro-life movement says: “We will stand with you.” The other side says, “You’re on your own. Take care of this, and get back to work, or get back to whatever you’re doing.” We want to walk women through pregnancy and motherhood. And you saw that. You saw that at the Court, and you’re seeing it in the pro-life movement now.

If Roe gets reversed, it doesn’t abolish abortion; it returns the jurisprudence surrounding abortion to the states. During the intervening years, the rationale for recognizing the fetus as a living human being has only grown. So in many states that will mean real progress for life.

In South Dakota on Friday, in concert with people gathering in Washington, DC, for the March for Life, Governor Kristi Noem announced two pro-life bills. One would ban abortions after the detection of a heartbeat (similar to the Texas law). The other would prohibit telemedicine abortions in the state. She said, 

We hope that this year’s March for Life will be the last and that the Supreme Court will finally protect every unborn life. But until that comes to pass, these bills will ensure that both unborn children and their mothers are protected in South Dakota.

Governor Kristi Noem's tweet on January 21, 2022
image found here

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, in a letter attached to their fundraising, describes much of the progress: 

FRC’s influence with state legislators this past year has been unprecedented. During the week of the Dobbs case hearing in early December, FRC leaders and experts hosted more than 120 state legislators from 39 states at our largest-ever summit designed to advance pro-life protections to the states.

Such mobilization is essential right now. In the event Mississippi’s pro-life law is upheld, it likely means states will have greater flexibility to set policies to protect pre-born lives.

Our experts are equipping frontline conservative legislators with scientific facts regarding life in the womb—along with moral and ethical reasoning that can inform every policy battle.

In recent months, our team launched an interactive tracking website titled “America’s Direct Deposit to Planned Parenthood,” revealing the outrageous amount of US Taxpayer dollars the abortion industry giant receives every year.

From our detailed policy research to our “friend of the court briefs”—including one we filed in support of Mississippi in the Dobbs case—these resources are informing policymakers at all levels.

He adds a request for prayer,

As this new year begins, I hope and trust you will commit to pray for our leaders—particularly those making life-or-death decisions on the Supreme Court….

God calls us to be intercessors in this hour. Intercession means to intervene on behalf of another, or to put it another way, to stand in the gap.

Will you commit to stand in the gap for our nation?

Let us never neglect to start and end the day on our knees, crying out to God for truth to prevail, for innocent lives to be saved, and for the Kingdom of God to advance.

Being an intercessor starts with prayer…but, in my experience, it doesn’t end there. That’s why our effective strategies including mobilizing Americans like you and informing policymakers—to shape the future of America and save lives in the womb.

That’s their organization’s goal. And it’s a good one. The call for the rest of us, besides prayer, is to inform, teach, help, support, and make it easier for individual women in distress to choose life in a world that has been trying to convince them not to.

I listened to a podcast the other night [Y Religion, episode 48, “The Complementary Nature of Mothers and Fathers” with Dr. Jenet Erickson], about research surrounding motherhood. Worth a listen. One detail was that, biologically, the growing baby and mother interact in ways we never knew. They share health support for one another. They exchange cells. They are forever part of one another. Once the baby is born he seeks his mother; he knows her voice and recognizes her. She is his preferred human for probably the first eighteen months, when he’s ready to turn outward toward father and others. It’s a profound honor to be so significant to another human being. If a woman truly knows that child within her, knows he is alive and interacting with her already, would she ever choose anything but life? The more we learn, the more life makes sense.

This year just might be the year we can more freely help all women choose life.