“Roe Is Dead, Hallelujah!” sang the headlines and read the signs waved by pro-lifers gathered at the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, celebrating the historic overturning of Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. 

Finally, after nearly half a century and more than 63 million preborn lives annihilated, federalized abortion on demand in America was over. 

I recall that more than a year ago, I told a colleague, “This is the year Roe will be overturned! This is the beginning of the end of abortion in America!” He looked askance and remarked, “Nah, that will never happen. I will be really surprised if that ever happens.”

And here we are, exuberant with celebration!

The rejoicing comes after decades of fighting by pro-life groups, churches, nonprofits, crisis pregnancy centers, and decent lawmakers who have sought to reverse the “egregious error” that robbed so many babies of a future and so many women of their souls. 

For too long, women have believed the myth perpetuated by a brilliant marketing scheme that via “women’s rights,” they shared bodily autonomy with the child within them, a child they had the right to kill for any reason. 

As Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the final 6-3 majority opinion: 

We end this opinion where we began. Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.

Abortion can no longer be said to be “the law of the land,” but full protections for the preborn and the complete abolishment of abortion in every state are a battle still to be fought. 

The momentous fall of Roe is indeed cause for celebration, as millions of lives will be saved as a result of the Supreme Court decision to uphold Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overruling the precedent for federal abortion protections set by Roe v. Wade (see article on page 16). However, as many pro-lifers are reminding us, the Court’s decision ultimately was a moderate one.  

Ending abortion in a free America: The heinous crime of legalized murder against generations of children is no longer in the hands of the federal government. Now, states must act to protect the rights of the preborn. (Photo credit: LPETTET/ iStock / Getty Images Plus)

Still, today abortion clinics are closing. Tomorrow, even more will be ending their services, as many states see the enactment of “trigger laws” or pre-Roe bans immediately taking effect to criminalize abortions now that Roe has been overturned. Missouri is among them. 

Lila Rose, founder and president of the pro-life nonprofit Live Action, has long been in the fight for life. 

In an interview, Rose told Charlie Kirk that many of her trailblazing predecessors said it couldn’t be done: “America is too pro-abortion,” they said. “But now we are one huge step closer to winning full legal protection for the preborn.” 

Yet “it’s not total victory,” Rose cautioned. There has to be a complete cultural change in “dark places” such as California and New York, where abortion is considered a fundamental right, and late- to full-term abortions are protected by law. 

Referencing the 14th Amendment, which guarantees that no state shall deprive anyone of “life, liberty, or property, without due process,” which is what abortion does, Rose noted that simply returning the abortion issue to the states does not do enough to uphold what the Constitution says “loud and clear” — that everyone, even the unborn, deserves equal protection under the law. 

Indeed, we now will see how pro-life, red state legislatures respond. 

Red States Respond

Missouri led off, announcing on Twitter it had become the first state in the Union to ban abortion on June 24. “Following the SCOTUS ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, Missouri has just become the first in the country to effectively end abortion with our AG opinion signed moments ago. This is a monumental day for the sanctity of life,” tweeted Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt.

Texas, Alabama, West Virginia, South Dakota, Louisiana, and Kentucky join Missouri, with “trigger laws” providing protections for the unborn we have never seen before. In some states, abortion services were stopped immediately following the SCOTUS ruling. 

“Having been given this second chance for Life, we must not rest and we must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land,” reacted former Vice President Mike Pence. 

Certainly, the significance of the Trump administration’s role in this massive win for life cannot be overstated. 

President Donald Trump’s fulfillment of his main campaign promises included appointing three constitutionalist judges to the Supreme Court during his presidency: Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett, who stood courageously to help secure the fall of Roe and federally protected abortion rights. 

Trump’s nominated replacements were for former justices who held staunch abortion-rights beliefs: Reagan-appointed Justice Anthony Kennedy and the late, Clinton-appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

Truly, a post-Roe America would not have been possible without Trump; he delivered on his promise to overturn Roe.  

When asked if he felt he personally played a role in the outcome of the high court’s decision, Trump told Fox News, “God made the decision…. This brings everything back to the states where it has always belonged. This is following the Constitution and giving rights back when they should have been given long ago.” 

His notion of divine intervention was followed by an inspiring remark: “There is still hope and time to Save America! I will never stop fighting for the Great People of our Nation.”  

Yet just as five brave justices refused to cave to the radical Left and withdraw their support of overturning an “egregious error” declaring abortion a “constitutional right,” the pro-abortion side grew ever more emboldened, and seemingly were overtaken by pure evil in their response to the decision. 

The Left Reacts Loudly and Aggressively

While complete joy and gratefulness were the emotions evoked by advocates for life, starkly contrasting feelings of anger and hatred spewed forth from the pro-abortion side. 

Militant, extremist groups such as Jane’s Revenge and Ruth Sent Us declared “open season” on pro-life organizations and crisis pregnancy centers, carrying out violent arson attacks on dozens of clinics across the nation in the wake of the decision. 

On June 25, an angry pro-abortion protester outside the Supreme Court got inches from the face of independent journalist Drew Hernandez and snarled, “I f*cking love killing babies,” before allegedly assaulting camerawoman Savanah Hernandez, as reported by The Post Millennial. 

Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) brazenly declared to a crowd, “To hell with the Supreme Court. We will defy them.” 

Not stepping aside: Next Step Pregnancy Services in Lynnwood, Washington, was attacked by pro-abortion extremists on May 25. Despite the vandalism, the clinic’s director vows to continue to stay open and to be there to serve pregnant women seeking an alternative to abortion. (Photo credit: Next Step Pregnancy Services, Lynnwood, Wash.)

The ugliness has continued ever since, as Waters would later announce black women would be out in the streets by the millions protesting the decision. 

But black women were not demonstrating in droves. In fact, the billion-dollar Planned Parenthood has decimated the black population. According to Pew Research Center statistics, black women have abortions at a rate of almost five times that of white women, making up around 40 percent of all abortions in America. Hispanic women have abortions at a rate double that of white women. 

Yet it was only recently that Planned Parenthood Federation of America President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson “grappled with the organization’s 100-year history” to reconcile with the legacy of its racist/eugenicist founder, Margaret Sanger. Sanger famously proposed in “The Negro Project” to reduce the black population, and literally to stop black women from having children altogether. 

“Sanger’s racist alliances and belief in eugenics have caused irreparable damage to the health and lives of Black people, Indigenous people, people of color, people with disabilities, immigrants, and many others. Her alignment with the eugenics movement, rooted in white supremacy, is in direct opposition to our mission,” wrote Planned Parenthood in April 2021.

Of course, the group reported “devastation” in the wake of the Court’s decision on Roe. “This is the first time the Court has reversed our constitutional rights. We won’t go back,” stated a Planned Parenthood spokesperson.

June 24 was also a very bad, sad day for President Joe Biden, who said the Court’s decision set America back nearly 150 years. Biden took to the podium to offer remarks on the decision, during which he singled out Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as “extreme” for his unbending stance on abortion not being a “constitutional right.”

One wonders if the self-described devout Catholic Joe Biden had ever conceived of aborting his own kids. Rules for thee, not for me, one presumes.  

But for Biden, the fall of a “landmark case [that] protected a woman’s right to choose” put “the very health and lives of the women of this nation at risk.”

And it was this point in his mostly banal speech that should have caused many Americans to perk up. This falsehood — the idea that abortion has ever been about women or “women’s rights” — is at the core of the propaganda perpetuated for decades that has served not only to profit from women monetarily, but also to stir up in them the belief that they truly have bodily autonomy over the life of the child growing within them. 

In the midst of her own despair about the ruling, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused “the radical Supreme Court [of] eviscerating human rights and American rights and their health safety because of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and the Republican Party and their super majority on the Supreme Court.” 

She continued, “American women today have less freedoms than their mothers. With Roe, and their attempt to destroy it, radical Republicans are charging ahead with their crusade to criminalize health freedom. What this means to women is such an insult. It’s a slap in the face to women.”

In truth, women have been slapped in the face for decades by the myth that abortion helps rather than hurts them. The phrase “women’s choice” is a slogan, a message that on its face sounds good. In reality, though, this deceit profoundly riles up the passions of many Americans for reasons that advance the interests and profits of only a few. 

America’s Tolerance of Abortion

“There’s a fortune in abortion — just a twist of the wrist and your through…. The population of the nation won’t grow if it’s left up to you.”

These first lines of a spooky jingle were created by the pioneer of the first abortion-on-demand empire, Dr. Bernard Nathanson (1926-2011). Nathanson founded the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) in 1969. Later in life, he experienced a change of heart and became a leading anti-abortion activist. 

His brilliant marketing to feminists, notably through the leader of the women’s movement during the 1960s, Betty Friedan, impacted millions of impressionable young women seeking independence during the sexual revolution. 

Nathanson’s efforts led to an explosion of abortion clinics in the 1960s and ’70s in poor communities in major metropolitan cities, such as New York City, resulting in millions in profits from which he, his family, and his associates benefited.

It is worth revisiting his 1984 film The Silent Scream (see review on page 43), which depicted the process of an abortion taking place in a uterus via an ultrasound, in which a child’s “screams” can be observed, showing the baby is in extreme distress. Upon seeing the child visibly in pain, Nathanson reversed course and stopped performing abortions altogether. 

Nathanson’s life is depicted in the wonderful 2020 film Roe v. Wade, which deftly combines the historical details of the unprecedented ruling with the complex portrait of a man swept up in the zeitgeist of 1960s and 1970s America. This low-key, highly recommended drama presents the facts, allowing viewers to come to their own conclusions about the abortion debate, but ultimately shows how money and power drove the ambitions of Nathanson and others like him who possessed a fervent enthusiasm to bring women into the “abortion” movement. 

It was Nathanson’s 1979 book Aborting America in which the aforementioned creepy jingle, the “Abortion Song,” is reported to have been sung gleefully by Nathanson, his friend, their wives, and their children. Its lyrics, composed by Nathanson, relate the grim truth about abortion.

What’s Next?

The Biden White House pleaded for peaceful protests in the wake of Roe’s reversal. However, violence by pro-abortion protesters has been rampant, and grisly footage of it has been released by reporters covering demonstrations. Some protesters also called for the abolition of the Supreme Court. 

Yet protestors holding signs with “bans off our bodies” are the same people who stood by and watched as thousands were fired for not submitting to vaccine requirements. 

Even though Biden stated firmly that the judgement “set America back 150 years,” we are not going back, but forward, forward to the states, where the work will continue to advance the vision of abolishing the genocide of the unborn in America. 

Even though the fight for life may be far from finished, the overturning of Roe provides a moment to pause with gratitude, and to thank all who have fought relentlessly for decades to right the wrongs of that 1973, 7-2 decision by a Supreme Court that was very compromised (confirmed by a close look at the political machinations that took place during the decision-making process). 

Dangerous acts of vandalism and arson by pro-abortion extremists continue to roll across the nation, destroying dozens of crisis pregnancy centers, including Gresham Pregnancy Research Center in Portland and Wisconsin Family Action in Madison, Wisconsin, yet no arrests have been made despite FBI statements promising investigations. 

Decisively, those who are determined to fight the good fight are not giving up. 

Traveling the Road to Truth and Healing

“I firmly believe that abortion does hurt women very much, not just physically but emotionally, mentally, spiritually,” said Heather Vasquez, executive director of Next Step Pregnancy Services, in an interview at her clinic. 

Vasquez’s center was attacked by pro-abortion extremists on May 25, and in June, she spoke with The New American about the assault on her center.  

“I do believe it [Roe] will be overturned…. I’m feeling pretty optimistic about it,” she said ahead of the final ruling on June 24.

“I’m unfortunately in [Washington] state where [abortion] will probably stay [widely available], but when people say [the Supreme Court decision] won’t change anything here I disagree with that. I think [the decision] will force places like Next Step and other pregnancy resource clinics to continue to be there to serve.”

Next Step Pregnancy Services, located in Lynnwood, Washington, in a suburb north of Seattle, was established in 1998 as a social-services center, providing the necessities of diapers, wipes, and all sorts of items required by new parents.

One-hundred-percent donor funded, the clinic offers these items free to anyone who walks through the doors. Vasquez explained that a licensed medical doctor is on staff, as are licensed nurses who operate ultrasound machines. 

Next Step provides prenatal care, prenatal vitamins, pregnancy tests, and ultrasounds to pregnant women seeking an alternative to abortion. To new mothers, they offer ongoing support and necessities such as diapers, clothes, and nursery items. They also are trying to provide an STD clinic, explained Vasquez. 

Next Step meets with approximately 1,200 clients a month. The recent attack on the center happened in the dark of night, by a criminal clad head to toe in black, including a hoodie and mask. The person graffitied the Next Step front and back porch areas with the words, “If abortion isn’t safe, you aren’t either!” The vandal also tagged the clinic with “Jane’s Revenge.”

The Lynnwood Police Department told The New American in an email that “the FBI was notified by us of the incident the day it was reported,” but that “no arrests have been made.” 

Next Step Is Not Stepping Aside

“We are obviously doing something right if people are that angry about it. We work here every day, all day, so we see exactly what happens here,” said Vasquez. “I feel there are a lot of people who are very misinformed about what happens in pregnancy resource clinics.”

Vasquez described numerous reasons why women visit her clinic, noting that they don’t “force people to parent or shame them … or start quoting Scripture…. It’s nothing like that. Our nurses are fantastic. They listen to [these women]; they talk truthfully with them about their options…. I invite people all the time to come and hang out with us and ask our nurses questions.”

The overturning of Roe won’t change what Vasquez and her staff do at her clinic. In Washington state, abortions will continue. “We’re 100 percent for women. We’re going to keep doing our work and being here to serve in whatever capacity we can. Whether it’s families who come to us, or women or men — we’re trying to get more fathers to come in, they are part of this, too…. We’re going to keep doing what we’ve been doing, which is serving women…. God has a plan.”

Reacting to the Court’s decision to overturn Roe, Vasquez told the The New American in an email, “Today is a momentous day in a lot of ways, whether the verdict was a joyous outcome for some or a not so happy one for others. Either way it’s done, and a precedent has been set. The staff at Next Step Pregnancy Services are naturally pleased with the court’s decision because the 1973 ruling was wrong on so many levels. It needed to be re-evaluated years ago rather than enabling the termination of nearly 63 million innocent lives.”

She concluded, “Next Step will continue our work regardless. Nothing has changed in our commitment to our mission and our faithfulness to our clients. The women and families who come into our clinic every day looking for support, acceptance, empathy, tangible resources, connection, and compassion will continue to be welcomed today, just like yesterday and in the days to come.”

Battles Looming on the Horizon 

Ultimately, this momentous decision is not due to just the Supreme Court. Those fighting have been involved for decades, and many people, from Donald Trump to Lila Rose to Heather Vasquez, have contributed to end federal involvement in this heinous crime of murder against generations of children. 

Yet many states are already declaring themselves “safe havens” for women to obtain abortion. The infographic on page 15 of this issue contains details about them. Some are even planning to expand access to abortion and help fund travel expenses for non-residents, effectively spreading their contagion to neighboring pro-life states. 

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has promised the Department of Justice will “protect the right to an abortion, including medication abortion.” 

“We stand ready to work with other arms of the federal government that seek to use their lawful authorities to protect and preserve access to reproductive care,” read a statement by Garland immediately following the SCOTUS ruling. 

“In particular, the [Food and Drug Administration] has approved the use of the medication Mifepristone. States may not ban Mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy,” Garland said.

On the day the decision was announced, President Biden also pledged to protect access to abortion pills, though the White House is limited in its ability to carry out such an order. Corporate America is also guaranteeing women have access to abortion by any means necessary, including through providing payment to women to travel to other states to receive an abortion. 

In his remarks, Biden said he was directing the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that abortion pills “are available to the fullest extent possible,” without specifying what measures the department would be taking.

There are two pills needed for a medication abortion, which is approved by the FDA for the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, which, notably, is four weeks after a heartbeat can be detected. 

When It Comes to Life, America Needs a Total Reset 

While the battle rages, the victory of Roe’s reversal is not to be diminished. Republican-led state legislatures now more than ever must continue to fight to end abortion in a free America. 

“If you have a vision, if you fight and pray, with your whole heart, anything is possible,” Lila Rose reminded Americans in her interview with Charlie Kirk. She went on to discuss and encourage involvement in a broader “parents movement,” taking a stronger approach to protecting children both in and out of the womb. We must decide what type of country we are handing down to our children. What are the many positive things we can do for them?

Annalisa Pesek is a writer, editor, and librarian. She joins The New American after spending nearly a dec-ade in New York publishing.