WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Republican U.S. Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, founder and chair of the Senate Pro-Life Caucus, saluted 49 years of the March for Life today on the U.S. Senate floor and said the Supreme Court finally has the opportunity to “restore justice and equality” to the unborn in the pending Dobbs case.
“This year’s official March for Life comes at a turning point in our nation’s history,” Daines began. “On December 1st of last year, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the landmark 15-week abortion case out of Mississippi, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. This is the first case in our generation that presents the Supreme Court of the United States with the best opportunity to right its historic injustice and finally overturn Roe v. Wade.”
The Senator noted that just as thousands of pro-lifers show up to the March for Life every year, thousands of unborn children without the ability to defend themselves are aborted each day in the United States: “The Roe decision has resulted in the deaths of more than 63 million innocent babies —63 million. In fact, as I stand here and speak today, 2,363 preborn children are being killed in this country.”
Despite the bleak track record of abortion in America and the pro-abortion example it has given to the world, Daines explained that advances in science and technology provide hope that the human dignity of the unborn child will be recognized and protected. “Thanks to incredible 4-D ultrasound technology, we can watch babies grow, hear their hearts beat, watch them yawn and even suck their thumbs,” the senator said. “We have come a long way since 1973 — it’s time our laws catch up with the science.”
“It’s time for the Supreme Court to allow state and federal lawmakers to rightfully represent their constituents and protect the most vulnerable among us. It’s time we, as the United States of America, a nation who is supposed to be leaders in the world on human rights, recognize — what happens to be the theme of this year’s March for Life — that equality begins in the womb.”
“The Dobbs case before the Supreme Court gives the Court a chance to finally restore justice and equality to the most vulnerable among us, in the spirit of this nation’s long history of progress in civil rights.”
The senator concurred with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s observation that the most important cases in Supreme Court history have frequently been ones where judicial precedent was overturned. “It’s taken 49 years since Roe v. Wade, for the Court to reconsider this wrongly decided case,” he said. “In the Dobbs case, I pray that we … correct this historic injustice and uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion law.”
The Senator also expressed that the end of Roe would most likely not be the end of abortion in America but a new beginning for the pro-life movement — one where pro-lifers must mobilize in each state to enact laws to protect the unborn. Individual state laws rather than a sweeping rule from the Supreme Court will likely determine the fate of the unborn moving forward. Daines emphasized his observation by reading the entirety of Justice Byron White’s dissent from Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton on the Senate floor, as White had made similar arguments.
“The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes,” White wrote 49 years ago.
“The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally dis-entitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the mother, on the other hand … ”
“The Court apparently values the convenience of the pregnant mother more than the continued existence and development of the life or potential life that she carries … This issue, for the most part, should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs,” White concluded.
Before yielding back his time, Daines thanked the pro-life marchers for their presence.
“I stand with you, and I will continue to fight to protect all life,” he concluded.