Opponents of Mississippi Abortion Law Demonstrate That They Want a Right to a Dead Baby

I t may just be morning in America — that was the overwhelming feeling as I stood outside the Supreme Court with the sun warming us on as oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Mississippi abortion case, were to be heard. For those of us who are outside the Court every January marking with sorrow the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, hope was palpable.

If Roe is overturned, that will not be the end of abortion in America, but states including Mississippi and Texas will all but ban it. Roe was overreach by the Court — doing what legislatures should do, based on all kinds of faulty and outdated facts. The bad science of Roe and its cruel abortion regime were emphasized by the presence of more than 100 doctors and other medical professionals outside the Court. If you were a speaker at the rally, as I was, when you checked in, you met a receiving line of doctors in lab coats encouraging us to persevere and urging the Court to end Roe. Doctors know the violence that abortion does to a woman and her child.

Some moments in the oral arguments were tremendous clarifiers. (See the transcript here.) Sonia Sotomayor asked ghoulish questions, suggesting that the real activity and pain an unborn child clearly demonstrates in utero resemble the jerking reflexes of a cadaver:

Virtually every state defines a brain death as death. Yet the literature is filled with episodes of people who are completely and utterly brain-dead responding to stimuli. There’s about 40 percent of dead people who, if you touch their feet, the foot will recoil. There are spontaneous acts by dead-brain people. So I don’t think that a response to — by a fetus necessarily proves that there’s a sensation of pain or that there’s consciousness.

It was a creepy line of questioning, for which I was a bit grateful. She thinks unborn babies are like dead people? What a dark view of life! But that’s what the culture of death does: It poisons our outlook on life in so many respects.

Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, M.D., was one of the speakers outside the Court. She used science to rebut Sotomayor’s line of reasoning:

To compare an unborn child to a brain-dead person or a corpse flouts science, which tells us that at 15 weeks’ gestation, a baby’s organs are fully formed, her heart pumps 26 quarts of blood a day, and her lungs are already practicing drawing breath.

Dr. Christie also co-authored one of the more than 140 amicus briefs in the case.

Shortly thereafter, one of the few men who spoke at the “Empower Women, Promote Life” rally outside the Court, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, held up a sonogram photo of his next grandchild, already clearly a part of his family. This is the reality of life. It is life in the womb — a developing human being, not some clump of cells that the counter-protesters insist on.

Though these days, sometimes the more radical abortion advocates don’t hide behind euphemisms. Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, has recently encountered protesters who explicitly say, “F*** the baby,” but without the asterisks. But you don’t have encounter the boldest protester to see that sentiment. It was present during the oral arguments. As arguments were made against the Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, you heard that what a defense of Roe is really about is the right to a dead baby.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett drew this out in asking twice about safe-haven laws, on the books in all 50 states. Safe-haven laws were introduced in the early 1990s, when we saw desperate stories of women who would abandon their just-delivered baby in dumpsters. The safe-haven laws allow for the drop-off of an infant at places, such as hospitals, where the baby will be immediately cared for. It’s anonymous, it doesn’t require lawyers or papers.

Presumably Barrett asked these questions because they shine a light on what those who want to keep Roe alive are really demanding: A woman needs a full three trimesters to choose to kill her baby; if she doesn’t have that, parenthood is forced upon her. Yet she is already a mother while pregnant and has the choice to give that child to a family who will raise her. Placing babies in loving homes is not a problem in America. It’s the teenagers in foster care who are the challenge. The answers to Barrett’s questions raises the question: Do we want to be a nation that protects a woman’s right to a dead baby? I daresay most of us don’t want us to be that America. Polls repeatedly show that most people are pro-choice because they want a woman in difficult situations to have options. But a right to a dead baby? That’s not what America wants. Barrett exposed that in Dobbs.

The Dobbs oral arguments and the scene outside the Court was a great moment of light in the darkness of a half-century of Roe. Overturning Roe won’t end abortion in America, but it will be more than a baby step in setting us on the right course where mothers and babies are welcomed and celebrated rather than thrown away.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.