On June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that wrongly made abortion a constitutionally protected right and the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision that reaffirmed the right to abortion. The recent opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, says, “We therefore hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives.” Joining Alito were Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. The latter three are Trump appointees. More than 63 million unborn babies have been aborted since the Supreme Court’s decision (“State of Abortion 2022,” National Right to Life). Though pro-abortionists are having a conniption, the Supreme Court ruling fails to grant the unborn child constitutional protection and does not outlaw abortion. It simply leaves the matter up to the states. Currently, there will probably be abortion bans in about half of the states. The following states currently allow abortions through every stage of pregnancy: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Washington, D.C., Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia (until the third trimester), and Washington. The following states currently allow abortion, but have trigger laws that will ban abortion in the eventuality that Roe v. Wade is overturned: Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wyoming. Some large corporations have announced that they will pay their employees to travel to other states for abortions (Fox Business, June 24, 2022). These include Airbnb, Alaska Airlines, Amazon, Apple, Citigroup, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Disney, GoDaddy, Hewlett-Packard, JPMorgan, Levi Strauss, Lyft, Microsoft, Starbucks, Tesla, Yelp, and Uber.
(Friday Church News Notes, July 1, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)