Please help carry on the post-Roe fight.
If you’re like me, you needed a little time to absorb it.
We had a text chain going on about topics for the Friday edition of The Editors podcast when MBD sent a message: “Dobbs in.”
I got to a TV as quickly as I could and took pictures of the screens of all three cable networks (Fox News first, of course) to memorialize the moment.
Then I glanced at Twitter before sitting down in front of a computer to start reading the decision. Even though I knew what had happened, the key sentence early on in the syllabus still stopped me. I had to stare at it in all its glory:
Held: The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.
A couple of generations of advocacy, thought, organizing, electioneering, marching, and prayer — from people from all walks of life, from busy mothers and dedicated nuns, from people famous and not — went into getting the Court to issue that long-overdue sentence.
I’m so grateful to all the millions of people, living and dead, who were part of that effort, and I’m awed by the immense intellectual and physical courage shown by the justices in the majority, who faced unprecedented pressure that reached into the inner sanctum of the Court and included an assassination attempt.
Gratifying as all of this is, the fight is really now only beginning, as we’ve seen in the left-wing agitation in the streets, the renewed threats to pack the Court, and the unrelenting assault on the decision and the brave justices who authored and signed on to it.
This is a fight that National Review is wholly committed to, which is why I’m asking you to contribute to our important and relentless work in this battle.
If you have any doubt about our bona fides, I direct you no further than Alexandra DeSanctis, who is an utterly fearless scourge of the pro-aborts and who knows so much more than her typically sputtering and abusive critics.
It might not be her most important piece, but my favorite Alexandra article from the past couple of years called out a CBS reporter for being essentially a PR flak for Planned Parenthood, and, as it happened, the reporter indeed recently left CBS to work for Planned Parenthood directly.
To help us keep up our drumbeat, a friend has generously offered to match every contribution to supporting our post-Roe coverage up to $100,000. So if you give 50 cents (and we are grateful for every penny), NR gets a dollar; if you give $5, NR gets $10; if you give $1,000, NR gets $2,000. And so on.
The main tools of the pro-aborts in this debate — assisted by the media, naturally — have always been lies and bullying. There was no untruth that they wouldn’t utter to prop up the Roe-imposed abortion regime, and they’ve always tried to portray pro-lifers as cranks and fanatics fundamentally out of touch with the times and with the drift of History.
This campaign is only going to get more intense and desperate. So, we must be even more determined to speak the truth and to make it clear that no matter what — no matter the obloquy heaped upon us, no matter how insistent they are on the lie that we are haters and tools of the patriarchy — we aren’t going away and aren’t standing down.
If you appreciate what we have done and continue to do on this essential issue, if you value the arguments and reporting we bring to bear, if you know NR’s credibility is indispensable in such a high-stakes moral, intellectual, and political contest, I hope you will give whatever you can.
And again, our generous friend is doubling every gift.
We are ready for this moment. For at least five decades now, NR has been speaking the truth about abortion and Roe, and then about Casey, without fear or favor.
The campaign began as soon as Roe was handed down, stretching from our initial editorial (“The practical meaning of the Court’s decision is that when a mother does not wish to bear a child, the fetus will end up in a hospital disposal can”); to our obituary for Harry Blackmun in 1999 (“He began as a single-cell human zygote containing 46 chromosomes . . .”); to our special “End Roe” issue late last year.
Down through the decades, we kept the faith when the conventional wisdom said, as it did for years and years, that the cause was lost.
We resisted every attempt after Republicans were defeated in elections to blame pro-lifers, most memorably in the atrocious GOP “autopsy” after Mitt Romney lost in 2012.
We insisted on originalist judges and blew the whistle when Republican presidents didn’t keep their eye on the ball (we strenuously opposed George W. Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers).
We set out to encourage fellow pro-lifers, to arm them with the very best arguments and facts, to provide sound strategic advice, and to defend them from a constant stream of invective and lies.
I feel confident in saying that there’s not another major, non-specialty publication in America that has covered this issue as passionately, unstintingly, and intelligently as NR.
At the risk of leaving some people out, I’ll just say that the editor of the print magazine wrote a withering book, The Party of Death, calling out the deception and bankruptcy of the pro-abortion side.
We have an experienced Washington reporter who puts questions to Democratic politicians on abortion that no one else dares to.
We have a long-time writer who prays at abortion clinics and routinely highlights the inspiring faithfulness of all those who utterly devote themselves to the dignity of human life.
We have a senior correspondent who writes incredibly personally and powerfully about life, and whose views got him canceled.
The other side of this debate represents one of the most unworthy causes in American history. Roe was its crutch, an extraconstitutional imposition of the Court’s will that never had any moral or legal legitimacy. Yet, the Left managed to preserve it for 50 years, banking that there’d never be five justices clear-eyed and fearless enough to call it out for the preposterous travesty that it always was.
Well, they were wrong. And if they think we are backing down now, they are wrong yet again.
For all that Dobbs represents a historic achievement, the tragedy of the past 50 years is it just allows us to get to the starting gate. There is much advocacy, thought, organizing, electioneering, marching, and prayer still ahead.
So if you were profoundly grateful for the decision that came down Friday, but know that we have much work remaining — and it needs to be done with passion, credibility, intelligence, and tirelessness — please support our journalism.
It means the world to us. It has sustained us over the past 50 years of rejecting Roe and pointing the way to a better future, and I’m hoping will sustain us in the years to come.
Thank you, God bless, and onward.
