More Legal Q&A

 

The 'facts' in Doe v. Bolton (the companion case to Roe v. Wade which legalized abortion for all 9 months of pregnancy) were also based on lies:  
in 1971, Sandra Cano - under the alias 'Mary Doe' - was a poor pregnant 22 year-old mother of three who was seeking a divorce from an abusive husband and the return of her children who were in foster care.  But she never wanted an abortion and never had an abortion.  She was befriended by an attorney named Margie Pitts-Haines, who deceived her into signing an affidavit that said she (Cano) wanted to obtain a late-term abortion - and used her as a plaintiff in a case for her own pro-choice activist agenda.  The defendant in the case was Arthur K. Bolton, Attorney General of Georgia, as the official responsible for enforcing the anti-abortion law in Georgia.

 

Of the sworn affidavit with Cano's signature that was used by Pitts-Haines to legalize late-term abortions in the courts, Cano had no recollection of signing the affidavit: "I don't think that was my signature, but I can't be sure, because I signed a lot of papers with her [Pitts-Haines].  She did not tell me what they were, and I trusted her. Every one of those statements was false" and "They connected my name to a case that I never knew about in the beginning, never participated in, never believed in... I was just a pawn."

 

Problems for the then 22-year-old Cano started when she approached Legal Aid in Atlanta, Ga., to seek help with getting a divorce from her husband.  She recalls being so thankful that a lawyer, named Margie Pitts-Haines, agreed to help her get her kids back — something that was inevitably achieved.

 

However, this assistance didn’t come without a price.  Without her knowledge, Cano became the plaintiff in the Doe v. Bolton case.  "They knew I was pregnant but I never mentioned that I wanted to end it,” Cano said. “That thought wasn’t in my mind.”  Pitts-Haines asked her about her views on abortion and women’s rights, and mentioned those topics were tied to a women’s rights case she was working on.  Little did the soon-to-be-plaintiff (Cano) know that she would be at the center of the legal quest for abortion rights.

 

Feeling an allegiance to the attorney who helped get her children back, Cano knew nothing about the case, yet complied with the few requests - actions that would inevitably throw her into the center of America’s abortion debate.  Cano was eventually brought to a court house and told to sit quietly and not to provide voluntary information about herself to the court.  At the time, Cano still had no idea what, exactly, was going on; she merely thought she was helping out with a random case.  And, she never testified in any hearings related to Doe v. Bolton.  "They told me don’t say your name, don’t speak to anyone," Cano recalls.  "There were several pregnant women on a bench and they wanted me to sit over with them, which I did.  I left while [the hearing] was still going on."

 

At that time in her life, she said her life was “so messed up” that she felt like she was drowning.  Not knowing much about legalities and being consumed with her own problems, she was the perfect candidate for exploitation. (Billy Hallowell, "Meet Mary Doe", The Blaze, January 25, 2013).

 

In 2003, Cano filed a motion to re-open the case because she had not been aware the case had been filed on her behalf and if she had known, she would not have supported the litigation, but her motion was denied.

 

Has the U.S. Supreme Court been wrong before?

The Supreme Court legalized the dehumanization and slaughter of millions of unborn American children in the Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs. Bolton cases of 1973.  These decisions are undoubtedly the most abusive and discriminatory legal decisions in U.S. history - on a magnitude previously unseen.  This merely shows that, as with all human institutions of which the Supreme Court is no exception, errors in judgment - even serious errors - have been and continue to be made.   On multiple occasions over time, the Supreme Court has grievously violated the rights of individuals:

 

1)  Dred Scott v. Sandford, (1857):  This landmark decision known as the Dred Scott Decision, ruled that African Americans, both slave and free, were not citizens and therefore had no rights because they were not protected by the Constitution.  Scott, an African-American slave, had asked the Court to award him his freedom because he and his master had resided in a state where slavery was banned.  Scott had even offered his slave owner $300 for his freedom and that of his family but was refused.  
 
On March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court declared African Americans as "...a subordinate and inferior class of beings..." and ruled that Dred Scott was nothing more than the "private property" of his "owner".  Therefore, he was not a citizen with rights, and had no freedoms whatsoever.  Subsequently, the passage of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution superseded and invalidated this prejudicial decision which should never have been validated in the first place.  However, the case is widely regarded as one of the most unjust decisions ever made by the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

Similarly, history repeated itself 116 years later with Roe v. Wade in 1973 when another group of human beings were classified as nothing more than property.  The Supreme Court said a fetus is not a person but an inferior class of being and therefore, could be disposed of for any reason.

 

2)  Buck v. Bell, (1927):  The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a forced-sterilization law in Virginia.  The statute made the sterilization of "unfit" or "feeble-minded" persons compulsory "for the protection and health of the state".  Those deemed with mental "deficiencies" were forced to undergo a surgical sterilization procedure - against their will.  This was nothing more than a form of eugenics - to improve the human race by preventing "defective" individuals from reproducing.   
 
The ruling, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, stated:  "We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives.  It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence.  It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.  The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes."
 
He concluded the ruling by referring to Carrie Buck, the 18 year-old "feeble-minded" patient in the case, and said:  "Three generations of imbeciles are enough".
 
Carrie Buck received a mandatory tubal ligation.  Contrary to authorities at her mental institution who labeled her with having the mental capacity of a 9 year-old, she remained an avid reader for all her life.  Her daughter Vivian, whom she had prior to the compulsory surgery, and who was also labeled as feeble minded", was subsequently noted for being an excellent honor-roll student.
 
It was later discovered by historian Paul Lombardo that Buck was only placed in the mental institution to hide her rape by a relative.  Furthermore, her own attorney, Irving Whitehead, had personally authorized her sterilization before the trial, and was a strong supporter of eugenic sterilization.  As expected, he poorly argued her case before the Court and lost.  How the Supreme Court allowed a eugenicist to represent Buck in the first place, is unconscionable.

 

Other High Court Decisions and their tragic similarities:  the U.S. Roe vs. Wade decision vs. Germany's Holocaust

Hitler used the word "parasite" in his book "Mein Kampf" as part of the process of dehumanizing the Jews and eventually making it legal to kill them.  Just a few years later, he ratified The Nuremburg Laws which excluded Jews from German society, which was then followed by Germany's High Court decision which legalized the Holocaust.

 

Pro-choice advocates have done the same thing using the same word "parasite".   Planned Parenthood used the word "parasite" when referring to the unborn child rather than using the word "person".  In Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the word "person" could not be used on the unborn child and thus made it legal to kill unborn children.

 

Deceptively pleasant euphemisms were also used in both cases to replace harsh realities.  In Nazi Germany, death camps were called "relocation centers" while in the U.S., abortion clinics are called "reproductive health centers".  Regardless, whether by extermination or pregnancy termination, both have resulted in the fully legal, High Court-approved, mass killings of human beings. 

 

Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Yehuda Levin put it this way:  "Each form of genocide, whether Holocaust, lynching, abortion, etc., differs from all the others in the motives and methods of its perpetrators. But each form of genocide is identical to all the others in that it involves the systematic slaughter, as state sanctioned "choice," of innocent, defenseless victims - while denying their 'personhood.'"

 

Roe v. Wade is a poorly written law according to pro-choice legal commentators:

John Hart Ely (Yale Law School), one of the most widely-cited legal scholars in United States history, argued that Roe v. Wade was wrong "because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be." (John Hart Ely, "The Wages of Crying Wolf: A Comment on Roe v. Wade," The Yale Law Journal, 82 (1973): 920-949).

 

The law clerk of Justice Blackmun (the Justice who authored the Roe v. Wade opinion), calls it "one of the most intellectually suspect constitutional decisions of the modern era." (Edward Lazarus, "The Lingering Problems with Roe v. Wade," Find Law Legal Commentary, October 3, 2002).

 

The Washington Post's legal editor says it has "a deep legitimacy problem." (Benjamin Wittes, "Letting Go of Roe," The Atlantic Monthly, January/February 2005, 48).

 

Pro-choice Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Roe v. Wade "ventured too far in the change it ordered and presented an incomplete justification for its action" and it is "not the way courts generally work." (Benjamin Wittes, "Letting Go of Roe," The Atlantic Monthly, January/February 2005, 48 and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, "Some Thoughts on Autonomy and Equality in Relation to Roe v. Wade," North Carolina Law Review 63 (1985): 376)

 

Did Roe v. Wade violate standard legal reasoning?

Yes.  Here's why.  The Supreme Court opted not to decide when life begins and then overturned the laws of 50 different states which protected the unborn.  Here is the Court's statement:

"We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to an answer."

 

Kerby Anderson, president of Probe Ministries International (www.probe.org) gave this astute assessment of the Supreme Court's statement above: "The decision also seems unpretentious by acknowledging that it did not know when life begins.  But if the Court did not know, then it should have acted "as if" life was in the womb.  A crucial role of government is to protect life.  Government cannot remove a segment of the human population from its protection without adequate justification.

 

The burden of proof should lie with the life-taker, and the benefit of the doubt should be with the life-saver.  Put another way: "when in doubt, don't."  A hunter who hears rustling in the bushes shouldn't fire until he knows what is in the bushes.  Likewise, a Court which doesn't know when life begins, should not declare open season on the unborn.

The burden of proof in law is on the prosecution.  The benefit of doubt is with the defense.  This is also known as a presumption of innocence.  The defendant is assumed to be innocent unless proven guilty.  Again the burden of proof is on the entity that would take away life or liberty.  The benefit of the doubt lies with the defense.

The Supreme Court clearly stated that it does not know when life begins and then violated the very spirit of this legal principle by acting as if it just proved that no life existed in the womb.  Even more curious was the fact that to do so, it had to ignore the religious community and international community on the subject of the unborn."

 

Even abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of NARAL Pro-Choice America and medical director of one of the largest abortion clinics in America at the time, commented on the misjudgment of the Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade:   "Of course, I was pleased with Justice Harry Blackmun's abortion decisions, which were an unbelievably sweeping triumph for our cause, far broader than our 1970 victory in New York or the advances since then. I was pleased with Blackmun's conclusions, that is.  I could not plumb the ethical or medical reasoning that had produced the conclusions.  Our final victory had been propped up on a misreading of obstetrics, gynecology, and embryology, and that's a dangerous way to win."  (Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., “Aborting America”, 1979).

 

Should the display of graphic abortion photos be made illegal? 

The American Freedom Law Center (www.americanfreedomlawcenter.org/) made the following comments regarding an attempt by pro-choice advocates to make the display of graphic abortion photos illegal - which is nothing more than blatant censorship and a violation of our Freedom of Speech guaranteed by our Constitution:  "An effective way to remove an unpopular message from public discourse is to relegate the speaker to ineffective means of expressing his message.  The First Amendment guarantees the right to influence the political process; it is not merely a right to catharsis.  Consequently, it is the off-putting, unpopular, and, when necessary, “gruesome” message that requires the greatest protection and the greatest audience access.  Banning abortion imagery from the public square because the government deems it “gruesome” is a pernicious form of censorship that suppresses ideas and thus directly conflicts with our profound, national commitment to the principle that debate on controversial public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.  Indeed, “gruesome” images of abortion convey a message that words are incapable of expressing—a message that requires the full mantel of protection under the First Amendment."

 

Robert Muise, AFLC Co-Founder & Senior Counsel, commented: “This injunction is nothing more than an effort to hide the brutality of abortion from the public.  Shutting down free speech under the guise of ‘protecting the children’ is simply another perverse argument advanced by the pro-abortion propagandists...The fact that ‘gruesome’ images may actually offend some persons or create a visceral reaction in others does not lessen their constitutionally protected status; it enhances it.”

 

David Yerushalmi, AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel, added, “It is a clearly established principle of First Amendment jurisprudence that a listener’s reaction or, as in this case, a viewer’s reaction to speech is not a legitimate basis for regulation.  The First Amendment knows no heckler’s veto, and there is no ‘minors’ exception to this well-established rule.”

 

As stated above, any effort to stop the display of abortion photos is dishonest.  Pro-choice advocates know that without the photos, it is much easier to trivialize and even ignore the brutality of abortion.  Photos of injustices reveal complex facts which could only be revealed visually.   What words adequately describe such horrors against humanity?   By displaying photos of actual abortions, the reality of the brutality, violence, and injustice will hopefully change the minds and hearts of those willing to see the truth of abortion to eventually bring about societal change - peacefully and legally - just like the previous civil rights movements of the past.