WASHINGTON (LifeSiteNews) — With the U.S. Supreme Court slated to revisit abortion law this week, Democrats such as Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire are threatening “revolution” if the justices overturn the Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.
Oral arguments will begin Wednesday in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which concerns Mississippi’s HB 1510 law banning abortions from being committed past 15 weeks for any reason other than physical medical emergencies or severe fetal abnormalities. The state is asking that the Court not only uphold the law, which prohibits abortion earlier than is currently permitted by the Court’s “viability” framework, but to take the opportunity to reverse Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which force all fifty states to recognize a “right” too abortion.
“I hope the Supreme Court is listening to the people of the United States because — to go back to Adam Sexton’s question — I think if you want to see a revolution go ahead, outlaw Roe v. Wade and see what the response is of the public, particularly young people,” Shaheen said Monday during a virtual event with WMUR reporter Adam Sexton and Shaheen’s colleagues in New Hampshire’s congressional delegation. “Because I think that will not be acceptable to young women or young men.”
.@SenatorShaheen on new abortion restrictions going into effect in N.H. & the upcoming Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case: "I think if you want to see a revolution, go ahead, outlaw Roe v. Wade and see what the response is…" #NHPolitics #WMUR pic.twitter.com/O7weoVuOSk
— Adam Sexton (@AdamSextonWMUR) November 29, 2021
“I’ve lived the consequences of the pre-Roe era — I had friends in college who were forced to seek dangerous back alley abortions because women across the country were denied access to critical family planning services,” she declared in a separate statement, Fox News reports. “We cannot allow Republican lawmakers to turn back the clock on women’s reproductive health and rights, which is precisely what the Mississippi case seeks to do. It is time to sound the alarm. Roe v. Wade isn’t just a decision that impacts women, their health and their financial security — it also impacts generations of families.”
Shaheen’s invocation of “dangerous back alley abortions” halted by Roe is a staple of pro-abortion dogma, despite being largely a myth.
Former Planned Parenthood and Centers for Disease Control statistician Dr. Christopher Tietze and NARAL co-founder turned pro-life activist Dr. Bernard Nathanson both admitted that the abortion lobby dramatically exaggerated the number of pre-Roe maternal deaths for political gain, with ex-Planned Parenthood director Mary Calderon estimating in 1960 that 90 percent of illegal abortions were committed by licensed physicians.
Further, to the extent that there was a decline in abortion-related maternal deaths, a 2005 analysis by FactCheck.org concluded that the “best available evidence” showed it began before states started legalizing abortion, and was largely due to the invention of new drugs. Today, the chief threat to abortion-minded women comes from the very abortion centers framed as the alternative to back alleys, including Jackson Women’s Health Organization itself, which has a record of regulatory noncompliance and safety issues going back more than a decade.
As for the warning to the Supreme Court, many perceived an inconsistency between Shaheen’s words and her party’s talking points about rhetoric “inciting” anti-government violence, which Shaheen herself has repeated:
Oh, where to begin?
1. I'm old enough to remember when "Inciting Insurrection" scandalized Dems.
2. "the state controlling our bodies"… wait, is she talking about vaccine mandates?
3. overturning Roe v. Wade would NOT make abortion illegal, it would merely make democracy legal.— ❌Larry Naselli❌ (@LarryNaselli) November 30, 2021
For 49 years we prolifers have marched peacefully by the millions with our firm belief that ABORTION IS MURDER. And now a sitting US Senator @SenatorShaheen is threatening violence if the court reverses this lawless opinion from 1972. That's the Democrat Party right there. https://t.co/vu7t5GpwyL
— @PatriotFile 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@patriotfile) November 30, 2021
This certainly sounds like a call to violence, doesn't it?
It seems that this insurrectionist isn't being called out by the media for some reason. I wonder why? https://t.co/jD4pFzSSoY
— Unvaxxedistan (@unvaxxedistan) November 30, 2021
While abortion defenders are working to mobilize their supporters with fears of an abortion-free future, many pro-lifers are more circumspect. Dobbs is arguably the greatest test yet of the Supreme Court’s current justices, a majority of whom were appointed by Republican presidents yet have still disappointed pro-lifers and conservatives on various occasions.
Only Justice Clarence Thomas is explicitly on the record against Roe, and only he and Justice Samuel Alito have established consistently conservative records over a significant period of time. While those two combined with former President Donald Trump’s three appointees formed a majority willing to let Texas’s heartbeat-based abortion ban temporarily stand on procedural grounds, the latter have disappointed conservatives in other cases, so how they will rule on the substance of abortion law remains to be seen.
LifeSiteNews will be on the ground to fully cover the case tomorrow, including livestreaming the oral arguments and reporting on events outside the Supreme Court building and throughout the nation’s capital.