Just now in Florida, the ghouls of the left are jitterbugging like Mephistopheles’ flaming minions in a “Night On Bald Mountain,” celebrating their summons-to-pitchforks triumph Monday in the state’s Supreme Court.
Repeal of Florida’s 1-year-old Heartbeat Protection Act, prohibiting most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, will be on the ballot in November. In a 4-3 decision announced, no kidding, on April Fool’s Day, Florida’s highest court approved a referendum for the November ballot that would enshrine abortion access into the state constitution.
Well, we asked for this, sort of, and now we’re getting it — in the words of H.L. Mencken — good and hard.
For nearly 50 years, the decision in Roe v. Wade stood as the Law of the Land™. The decision handed down by seven chaps in black robes preempted virtually all attempts by Americans who embrace the animating principle of the Declaration of Independence to defend innocent human life that had the bad luck to be in the wrong location: Its mother’s womb.
Arrive intact, desired and “viable” — a continually evolving concept — at the well-lit end of the birth canal, and the same folks who, minutes earlier, were OK with having the lad or lass maliciously dismembered and suctioned into a spare parts bag now would proclaim the newcomer’s right to an endless parade of benefits, public and private.
And that’s where we were, with red state legislatures’ attempts to nibbling at abortion “rights” going mostly nowhere, because Harry Blackmun applied SCOTUS’ newly found “penumbra” — pale shadows cast by assorted amendments, including the First and Fourteenth — to women wanting to terminate pregnancies. (Less ballyhooed: The Court’s same-day pronouncement in Doe v. Bolton that state laws designed to limit abortion access post-“viability” must allow for the “health of the mother,”which provided an unlocked door wide enough for passage of a Planned Parenthood refrigerator truck.)
Then came the Federalist Society, followed by the presidency Donald Trump, followed by the one area of his campaign in which No. 45 made good: The appointment of judges and SCOTUS justices who, having winked coyly at the Senate, would undo the Court’s most provocative decision since Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857). Refreshingly, the new conservative majority obliterated abortion-on-demand at its first opportunity. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, arriving from Mississippi, provided just the right vehicle.
Now decisions about abortions are back in the states, where, arguably, they belong — if you believe in the wisdom of decisions on granular topics being made as close to the people as possible. Which renders the left’s reaction — simultaneously predictable and chilling — all the more repulsive. They’re right here. In our faces.
So far, the political tussles give pro-abort factions the upper hand. Already, Florida’s opponents of womb-bound innocents are salivating at the opportunity coming Nov. 5.
Ron DeSantis got his six-week abortion ban. He didn't get the ability to block voters from having their say on it. #Yeson4FL #BansOffOurBodies #DeathSantis #VoteBlueFFS https://t.co/42qWYt9OwZ via @slate
— Lesley Abravanel 🪩 (@lesleyabravanel) April 2, 2024
About that. We who have watched close-up how he governs expect Gov. Ron DeSantis, who said he’d sign an outright ban on abortion if the Legislature delivered the bill, will not assume the — *ahem* — fetal position for two trimesters while abortion hawks command the field. We expect, instead, he’ll lead the opposition to the referendum. Rightly so.
First, because the hand-wringers such as President Biden are lying to us. His claim:
Yesterday, Florida’s Supreme Court upheld a state abortion ban, likely triggering the Governor's more extreme law eliminating access before many even know they're pregnant.
— President Biden (@POTUS) April 2, 2024
Outrageous.@VP and I remain committed to protecting reproductive freedom in Florida and across the U.S.
On that front, here is some unexpected — possibly unintended — but fascinatingly timely insight from our pals at the Tampa Bay Times:
More than 84,000 abortions were performed in Florida in 2023. The majority were performed after six weeks, according to data from the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration.
Overall, from 2018 to 2023, Florida doctors performed about 41% of abortions by six weeks.
Caught that, didn’t you? With no pressing deadlines down at the abortion factory, Sunshine State physicians nonetheless sliced, diced, and sucked more than four in 10 babies out of wombs before arrival of the heartbeat horizon.
And yet opponents of the act keep thumping the drum that many/most women don’t realize they’re pregnant until after six weeks. Don’t they? Don’t they really?
How many of the 59% do realize and decide to abort, but, lacking a deadline, wait to submit to Hoovercide until it’s convenient?
Often appointed, never elected, Democrat totem Robert Reich also has some horrible thoughts.
When Florida's 6-week abortion ban goes into effect, most Floridians who need an abortion will have to travel across at least three states. Those who can't afford to travel will be subject to forced births.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) April 2, 2024
Abortion bans aren't "pro-life" They're pro-poverty & pro-inequality. pic.twitter.com/9JjQwPhva8
Kill your baby for your personal economy! Abortions for equity! These are the philosophies of reapers and banshees, every one of them, with no small portion of antebellum slaveowners mixed in. Indeed, the demands of abortion dogma echo the claims of supporters of the South’s peculiar institution — these are not people; they are chattel — are echoed in the frozen hearts of Biden, Reich, Abravanel, et al.
Medical knowhow reduces the age of “viability” almost daily. And increasingly vivid sonograms reveal that what is growing within the mother ship is no mere clump of cells, but is, most certainly, human.
Democrats, who are nothing if not forecastable in their strategies and tactics, see the development in Florida primarily as an opportunity to drive voter gains. Besides, they shrug, they’re just trying to set abortion access back to the age of viability (so long as it’s 24 weeks, minimum).
Important if true. But let’s have a look at the referendum, shall we?
No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.
There it is. Referendum supporters would not stop abortions at the point of viability, whenever that is, but also include access when the “patient’s health” is in question. It’s Doe v. Bolton all over again.
And Democrats are dancing. What more do you need to know?
