Over the past month, Judge Amy Coney Barrett has persisted through the extensive process that is required to become a Supreme Court Justice. First, a nomination from President Trump, much to the delight of Conservatives, and to the displeasure of Liberals. Judge Barrett, entering the Senate Judiciary as an austere scholar and judge, had the qualifications and capabilities anyone could wish for in a Supreme Court Justice. A mother to seven and legal expert, she knew how to handle the childlike approach of the Democrat Senators to questioning her throughout her week of confirmation hearings in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Republicans treated her with the utmost respect, the Democrats lacking all sense of maturity when speaking to her. After masterfully navigating her way through the hearings, no notes necessary, Judge Barrett’s nomination was sent by the Judiciary Committee to the Senate for a full vote. After the Democrat Senators complained about this procedure for a while, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claiming the Republicans were stealing Supreme Court seats and breaking over 200 years of precedent (both claims of which are untrue) and even going so far as to say that “Generations yet unborn will suffer the consequences of this nomination” (an ironic statement that I’ll explain in a moment), the vote was undertaken, returning 52-48 in favour of confirming Judge Barrett. Thus, she was sworn in by Justice Clarence Thomas, becoming Justice Amy Coney Barrett (and on Hillary’s birthday too, very well played by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell).

Throughout the process, from the time of ACB’s nomination to her confirmation and swearing in, and even now, liberals have done nothing but complain, attempting to pull every move they could to stop this from happening. Why? Because there is one major ruling on the table that, with the addition of Justice Barrett, could now be overturned: Roe v Wade. This is a decision that was made by the Supreme Court in 1973 to make abortion legal. It is something that has aided in the killing of hundreds of millions of unborn babies, including far too many cases of babies in the later stages of development (and yes, there have been cases of babies born alive and left to die). Many liberals are pro-abortion, or, as they would call it, “pro-choice”. That is why they want to protect the Roe v. Wade decision by all means necessary. The problem with this landmark decision, however, is that it is all predicated on a lie. Allow me to explain.

Roe v. Wade was ruled on by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in 1973. It came into being a few years before that, when a young woman by the name of Norma McCorvey, who became known in the case as Jane Roe, became pregnant with her third child. She was struggling financially, and had given up her two previous children, ceding custody of the first to her mother, and adopting out the second. In this case, she wished to have an abortion, however, she could not legally seek one in her State of Texas. Abortion was only legal in a few States at the time, including New York and California. Norma’s circumstances left her unable to travel to any of these States. She was then approached by two lawyers who were recently out of law school, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. Weddington and Coffee wanted to change America’s abortion laws, and so used Norma as a means of getting what they wanted. When Norma was five months pregnant, the two lawyers took her out to lunch and drank beers so that they could get Norma kind of drunk and convince her to agree to filing suit in a challenge to Texas’ abortion laws. They clearly took advantage of her for their own personal ambition, but nevertheless the case went to court in Texas, where Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade represented the State as the defendant, hence Roe v. Wade. All Norma did was sign a one page affidavit, and this was her only involvement in the case. She never went to a single trial hearing. Eventually, the panel of three judges ruled in favour of the two lawyers, yet the State appealed, and thus the case went to the Supreme Court.

Interestingly enough, if Weddington had wanted to help Norma obtain an abortion, she could have, as she was involved in a Texas based abortion referral network. However, she never once mentioned this to Norma, ironic considering this woman who basically championed abortion withheld one from her own client. The major kicker however was that Norma gave birth to her third child during the time of the trial proceedings, putting the baby up for adoption. That means that Norma, or as she was known in the legal proceedings Jane Roe, never had an abortion.

Now around the same time another similar case occurred in the State of Georgia. This case became known as Doe v. Bolton. Sandra Cano, a struggling mother of three, became known in the case as Mary Doe. She had become pregnant with her 4^th child, and met with a lawyer by the name of Margie Pitts Hames, in order to seek legal aid in obtaining custody of her children who were in foster care, and also to get a divorce. On behalf of Sandra, Hames filed suit to obtain an abortion, something that Sandra had never requested nor wanted. The signed documents produced whereby she had allegedly agreed to one were manipulated in one of two ways. Either Hames had forged Sandra’s signature, or she had slipped the document in question into the papers that Sandra was under the impression regarded the sole custody of her children and divorce, which she had signed. Hames then took the case to the District Court in Georgia, whereby Attorney General Arthur Bolton represented the State. The challenge set down was to the law pertaining to abortions permitted only in the cases of rape, severe fetal deformity, or threat to the mother. Similarly to Roe v. Wade, the panel of three judges found that portions of Georgia’s abortion law were unconstitutional, but the State appealed, and so Doe v. Bolton also found its way to the Supreme Court.

Like Norma, Sandra never appeared in court after the initial hearing. Rather, she fled to Oklahoma in order to save the child with which she was pregnant. That means neither of the two women who these cases were based upon ever had an abortion. It was all predicated on a lie.

In the SCOTUS, Roe v. Wade was ruled on with a 7-2 majority to uphold the decision made by the Texas court. Doe V. Bolton was also upheld. In the ruling, Harry Blackmun invented a new legal framework, based upon a three-trimester measure of pregnancy, which would essentially allow abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. This was not at all based on the medical understanding of fetal development nor pregnancy. The framework specified that in the 1^st trimester, abortions were to be unrestricted. In the 2^nd trimester, some restrictions were to be made, but only for “health” reasons. In the 3^rd trimester, abortion was to be restricted in its entirety as long as the laws contained certain exceptions for cases where abortion was said to be necessary to save the life or health of the mother.

To get an understanding of what “health” was defined as, we must look to the adjunct case, Doe v. Bolton. The rulings in this case defined “health” in a very broad sense, in which was included the “physical, emotional, psychological and familial” health, as well as the age of the woman in question. Due to the broad scope of the definition of “health”, abortion was practically justified for almost any reason in the third trimester. This set a terrible precedent which has basically allowed abortions of any and all kinds to be carried out in the years since, killing tens of millions of babies.

Now the legal foundation for Roe v. Wade is, in reality, totally nonsensical. In Blackmun’s argument, he concluded that a woman’s choice to have an abortion was covered under the “right to privacy”. Essentially, he claimed that the killing of a child still in the womb was a private matter, and is therefore justified. However, this “right to privacy” as Blackmun defined it lacks a strong legal foundation.

To understand this, we must venture back to 1965, to the case of Griswold v Connecticut. This case centred around contraception. In the rulings of this case, SCOTUS made the decision that certain State restrictions on contraception were considered unconstitutional. The reasoning behind this was that, in the eyes of the Supreme Court, there was a “right to privacy for married couples that protects their ability to obtain contraception.” This in itself was vague, but became the basis for the eventual Roe v. Wade decision. In Griswold v Connecticut, Justice William Douglas wrote that the decision that was made to give couples this right was a resultant of “penumbras formed by emanations” from various parts of the Constitution. Now you may wonder, what in the world is a penumbra? A penumbra is defined as “the partially shaded outer region of the shadow cast by an opaque object” or “the shadow cast by the earth or moon over an area experiencing a partial eclipse” or “the less dark outer part of a sunspot, surrounding the core”, or “ a peripheral or indeterminate area or group”. For clarification, an “emanation” is defined as “something which originates or issues from a source.”

Essentially, “penumbras formed by emanations” or, an indeterminate area formed by something which originated from a source, in this case from the Constitution, gave couples the right of privacy to obtain contraception. This formed the basis for a later case, Eisenstaedt v. Baird, which determined that this right of privacy extended to individuals who were unmarried. That brings us back to Roe v. Wade, as this right to privacy being ruled to extend to individuals set the basis for the Roe v. Wade decision, in which Blackmun essentially ruled that the right of privacy for individuals to obtain contraception was inclusive of the right to an abortion. In making this determination, SCOTUS practically twisted the words of the Constitution to align with an ideology, one which allowed for the taking of innocent human lives. In essence, this decision means that abortion is viewed as a method of contraception. Yet abortion should never be seen as a form of birth control. That is what encourages people to be reckless and get pregnant time and time again, with the thinking that they can just get an abortion if they fall pregnant. It is disrespectful to human life.

But life is where the case for abortion can fall apart. See, in his ruling, Justice Blackmun stated that if prenatal “personhood is established” the case for abortion “collapses for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the 14^th Amendment”. The 14^th Amendment grants American citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” and forbids the States from denying any person “life, liberty or property, without the due process of law” or to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”. This links in with Blackmun’s ruling in that if personhood is established, the unborn baby thereby possesses the right to life, and there no longer exists any case for abortion.

That means that the entire case for abortion is dependent on dehumanizing and depersonalizing one whole group of human beings: unborn babies. Now think about other times when certain groups were treated in this way. The most infamous one would be the treatment of the Jews in Nazi Germany, where they were dehumanized and tattooed with numbers. Dehumanizing and/or depersonalizing human beings is a tactic used to make them appear subhuman in an attempt to justify terrible actions taken against them. In the case of abortion, it is to take their lives before they even get a chance to live them. Abortion has killed somewhere in the vicinity of 60 million babies since it was legalized. It is a blight on humanity that this has been allowed to occur.

That is why Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court is such a monumental moment for America. For a long time, it has been virtually impossible to overturn Roe v. Wade, given the balance of power in the Supreme Court was not held by Conservatives when it came to this matter. The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, God rest her soul, who Justice Barrett will replace, was an advocate for women’s rights, and thus would not be one to overturn the decision on abortion laws. Chief Justice Roberts, who many would think is supposed to be more Conservative, sides with the liberal Justices on many matters. But now, with the appointments of Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, all by President Trump, there is the very real prospect that Roe v. Wade, a law predicated on a number of lies, will be overturned, bringing about an end to legalized abortion.

For too long, baby-killing has been legal in the United States of America. Organisations like Planned Parenthood, who (shocker) opposed ACB’s nomination to the Supreme Court, have profited off the killing of generations of unborn babies. But in ACB we have hope that a loud voice, a voice of change, will finally be given to the voiceless, and millions of lives saved. If you listened closely as Amy Coney Barrett was appointed to the Supreme Court, you could hear the cheers of millions of unborn babies who may now get to live.

Chuck Schumer said in his speech to the Senate just prior to the confirmation vote that “Generations yet unborn will suffer the consequences of this nomination”. There was a profound irony in Senator Schumer’s statement. No, generations yet unborn will not suffer. Rather, they will no longer suffer a cruel end, but will be allowed to be born and live their lives. The Left’s contempt for human life is reprehensible. But Conservatives respect human life. And now we have a chance to make things right.

We must be thankful for President Trump’s pro-life stance. We must be thankful for Justice Amy Coney Barrett. And we must now live in the hope that the disrespectful laws predicated on lies and ambition will be overturned, and justice and respect for human life restored to the United States of America.

God Bless President Trump. God Bless Amy Coney Barrett. And God Bless all the unborn babies, and those who never had the chance to live.