On October 1, various national pro-life leaders, including myself, will gather in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, as the Justices get back to work for the Court’s new term, for a special event called the Moral Outcry project.
Allan Parker of The Justice Foundation started the Moral Outcry and then partnered with pro-life groups across the country to gather signatures on a statement that expresses the conviction of millions of Americans that abortion is a crime against humanity. The petition presents to the Court the reasons why it is time to reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal through all nine months of pregnancy and for any reason.
The “Moral Outcry Petition” is not simply a request for the Court to do so, but the number of people signing it is itself a sign of the sustained and severe criticism to which Roe has been subject since 1973. Such criticism is taken into account by legal experts as a reason for overturning judicial precedent.
With almost a quarter of a million signatures so far, the petition cites five reasons, based on constitutional law, why the time has come for the Supreme Court to reverse Roe:
- Abortion is considered by more and more to be a crime against humanity.
- We now have more scientific evidence than ever that life begins at conception.
- The evidence that abortion hurts women has grown greater than ever.
- There have been changes in the law that decrease the temptation to abort; for instance, Safe Haven Laws in all 50 states allow parents who cannot take care of a newborn to anonymously leave their baby at a safe, designated place, with no questions asked and no fear of criminal penalties.
- There have been changes in fact since Roe v. Wade. For instance, a million people are now waiting to adopt healthy newborn infants.
You can view the petition at www.PriestsforLife.org/MoralOutcry.
The Moral Outcry is giving a national platform to the voices of countless Americans who want Roe v. Wade reversed. Supreme Court justices will decide in the upcoming weeks if they will hear any of the abortion-related cases that have been presented to them. Any one of these cases provides the Justices, if they are ready and willing, to further weaken, modify, or reverse Roe, even if the case does not explicitly go to the core questions of Roe. This is so because any case dealing with abortion ultimately finds its foundations in the case that legalized it to begin with.
Unlike the U.S. Congress, where we constantly lobby our elected officials to take one or another form of action, the Supreme Court is not technically an object of “lobbying.”
Yet neither is it disconnected from the views of the American people. Whether a case that is precedent should be overturned by the Court depends, in part, on how “workable” it has proven to be for the American people and for the courts themselves that hear the people’s disputes. While the New York Times declared on the day after Roe vs. Wade, “Supreme Court Settles Abortion,” popular sentiment has proven few issues to be as unsettled as this one.
In 2007, when the Supreme Court upheld the federal ban on partial-birth abortion, the following words appeared in the Court’s Gonzales vs. Carhart decision:
“It seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained….Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow…”
That was four years after many of those same women (of the Silent No More Campaign) began gathering in front of the Court on each anniversary of Roe with their signs that say, “I Regret My Abortion.”
And as part of the “Moral Outcry” effort, not only the names of Americans deeply troubled by Roe, but also the affidavits of those wounded by their abortion are being submitted into the record of upcoming Court decisions pertaining to abortion.
As the Lord said, let those who have ears to hear, hear.
Fr. Frank Pavone is one of the most prominent pro-life leaders in the world. He became a Catholic priest in 1988 under Cardinal John O’Connor in New York. In 1993 he became National Director of Priests for Life. He is also the President of the National Pro-life Religious Council, and the National Pastoral Director of the Silent No More Campaign and of Rachel’s Vineyard, the world’s largest ministry of healing after abortion. He travels to about four states every week, preaching and teaching against abortion. He broadcasts regularly on television, radio, and internet. He was asked by Mother Teresa to speak in India on abortion, and was asked by then-candidate Donald Trump to serve on his Pro-life and Catholic advisory councils. He has served at the Vatican as an official of the Pontifical Council for the Family, which coordinates the pro-life activities of the Catholic Church. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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