Tomi Lahren Betrays Unborn for Power, Says Keep Roe v. Wade So We Can Win Elections
Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren took the opportunity of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick to contend that overturning the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade decision by the High Court “would be a huge mistake.”
Lahren introduced her “Final Thoughts” video for Fox News, which was published on Saturday, saying she recognized that fellow conservatives and Trump supporters may disagree with what she was about to express, “but I have to be true to my beliefs whatever the party line.”
“Pressing for a Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade would be a huge mistake,” she said.
Lahren continued citing recent polling showing Americans agree with the ruling to legalize abortion by a margin of 2-to-1. However, she did not mention that Republicans oppose Roe 58 to 36 percent.
“This president is winning for the American people on the economy, foreign policy, and tax reform,” Lahren said. “These are areas that benefit all Americans regardless of religion or social beliefs. If we continue to focus on these things and immigration, we’ll sail into 2020 with all three branches in our control.”
“That’s how we get things done for the American people, that’s how we win,” the Fox News contributor stated, declaring that “we lose when we start tampering with social issues.”
During the presidential campaign, Trump promised repeatedly to appoint pro-life judges and published a list of conservative originalist and textualist jurists from which he pledged to pick for any Supreme Court vacancies that would arise. As a reminder to Lahren, he won the election.
Georgi Boorman, writing for The Federalist, noted the Roe v. Wade opinion was the opposite of fidelity to the words and original intent of the Constitution, and thereby in opposition to conservatism.
“Roe was judicial activism of the most blatant kind,” Boorman wrote. “It was bench legislation, pure and simple.”
She quoted from the ruling, which arbitrarily established the state government’s interest in protecting the life of the pre-born based on the trimester of the mother’s pregnancy. The judges decided the state really only has a strong interest in the unborn’s life in the third trimester, based on a viability outside the womb argument.
Of course, the age of viability has continued to move earlier into the pregnancy since the Roe decision over four decades ago, with many surviving after only five months gestation.
“[Roe] reads like a section of a bill, not a constitutional ruling,” Boorman argued. “Judges are not supposed to make laws, they are supposed to apply them. Doing otherwise undermines the rule of law, which is necessary for a stable society and rule by consent of the governed.”
The ruling created an inherent contradiction in the law that remains to this day.
Roe held (at least for the first two trimesters) that it was up to the mother’s frame of mind whether she was carrying an unborn child whose life was worthy of the state’s protection or whether she was carrying an “unwanted” fetus with no right to life.
Nonetheless, the law protects the unborn regardless of the mother’s frame of mind in cases of murder and assault. If someone attacks a pregnant woman with the intent of killing or causing serious injury to her or her baby and by those actions causes the death of the unborn child, that person is guilty of murder.
Even if the criminal defense team could prove the mother was on her way to the abortion clinic to end her pregnancy, it would not matter in the eyes of the law. This is a complete logical inconsistency that cannot be explained away.
I have a friend who is an executive vice president in charge of sales for a very successful corporation founded by his family over twenty years ago.
The company employs hundreds of workers and won an award as the top manufacturer in the state a few years back. Its products go all over the world.
He would not be here today if over 40 years ago outside of an abortion clinic his adopted mother did not talk his biological mother (a 15-year-old who had been raped) out of ending her pregnancy.
This business leader has four wonderful children — two boys and two girls (the oldest of which will turn 15 this month) — and a wife of his own now.
Try telling them his life was not worth saving at any point while he was in his mother’s womb.
President Reagan recognized that Roe v. Wade was not consistent with the nation’s founding beliefs.
He issued a proclamation in 1988 to highlight the problem, which read in part, “America has given a great gift to the world, a gift that drew upon the accumulated wisdom derived from centuries of experiments in self-government. . . .”
It is a “declaration, as a cardinal principle of just law, of God-given, unalienable rights possessed by every human being.”
He continued, saying that one of those inalienable rights, “as the Declaration of Independence affirms so eloquently, is the right to life.”
Reagan noted that the “tragic and unspeakable results” since the Roe decision, at that time 15 years before, had been the loss of 22 million unborn infants. That number has now reached 60 million.
Based on these observations, the proclamation closed: “I, Ronald Reagan…do hereby proclaim and declare the unalienable personhood of every American, from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death…Upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.’”
Lahren concluded her video using the same reasoning of the late New York Democrat Gov. Mario Cuomo, who famously argued he was personally opposed to abortion as a Catholic, but did not want to impose his views on others.
“I’m saying this as someone who would personally choose life,” Lahren said, “but also feels it’s not the government’s place to dictate. This isn’t a black and white issue and I would never judge anyone in that position.”
While Lahren appeals to staying true to her beliefs in advocating against overturning Roe, she needs to understand those beliefs are not grounded in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, and thereby not in conservatism.
Further, if history teaches us anything, doing the right thing and the most popular (or winning) thing are not always same thing, but the essence of being a principle-based conservative is supporting the right thing.
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