I was just a few yards away, at a competing rally nearby, when Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer shouted into a microphone while pointing toward the Supreme Court building.
“They’re taking away fundamental rights,” he said. “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
He was speaking at a rally in support of abortionists in the June Medical Services case, even as it was being argued before the Supreme Court.
I was there to support the state of Louisiana and its “Unsafe Abortion Protection Act,” which was enacted in 2014 to protect the health and safety of women in that state.
Aside from the fact that Schumer’s threats are highly offensive and, in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, “dangerous,” they also reflect a narrative that is unreasonable and deceptive regarding the court case itself.
First of all, it is the abortion industry that placed this case in the hands of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and their seven colleagues to begin with. Louisiana passed a law to enhance women’s health. The abortionists challenged it in court, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law, which is why the abortionists brought it to the Supreme Court.
Second, no woman from Louisiana has come forward as a party to this case to complain to the court about the law or how it purportedly restricts her rights.
Third, this law does not prohibit a single abortion. It does not take away or challenge any “fundamental right.” In fact, it simply implements something Roe v. Wade itself said the states could do, namely, “seeing to it that abortion, like any other medical procedure, is performed under circumstances that insure maximum safety for the patient.”
Moreover, Schumer doesn’t seem to realize that the Supreme Court itself does not consider abortion in the category of “fundamental rights,” which is precisely why it gives wide latitude to states to regulate the procedure, using (since the 1992 Casey decision) an “undue burden” standard rather than a standard of “strict scrutiny,” which is the standard that would apply to “fundamental rights.”
At issue in this case is how exactly to define that “undue burden.” Louisiana abortion clinics have routinely committed health and safety violations, as documented in this report revealing some 1,440 violations by abortion clinics across 32 states. We’re talking about serious infractions — untrained staff, expired medications, unsafe and unsanitary clinic conditions, lack of emergency medical equipment, failure to keep proper medical records, failure to monitor patients’ vital signs, and more.
Louisiana tried to address these problems by, among other things, requiring abortionists to have hospital admitting privileges — just as other doctors in Louisiana are required to have. This increases the credentialing standards for such doctors. While the abortionists claim this would deprive women of access to abortion, the 5th Circuit decision found that no abortion clinic in Louisiana would close because of this law, and that at most it would create a one hour delay, at just one of the clinics, for those seeking abortion.
That’s hardly the deprivation of a fundamental right.
The court also found that the only reason some of the abortionists did not have hospital admitting privileges was that, in the words of the 5th Circuit Court, they “sat on their hands” rather than apply for those privileges.
In short, not only was Schumer’s behavior ridiculous, but the abortionists’ case before the court is nowhere near reasonable.
Rev. Frank Pavone is the national director of Priests for Life.
