We Must Not Let Our State Courts Create Mini-Roe v. Wade’s
If you had to choose one legal organization as evil as Planned Parenthood, it wouldn’t be the well known ACLU, it would be the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR).
When the abortion industry had to defend its most brutal “doctors” like late-term abortionist, Leroy Carhart and his partial birth abortion procedures, they called on the Center for Reproductive Rights, which gladly sued on his behalf to overturn the partial birth abortion bans.
They are so radically pro-abortion, that they sued the Obama administration for not going far enough in promoting abortion within Obamacare.
Needless to say, American Pro-Lifers should pay close attention to what the CRR is promoting and be ready to counter it.
Even before the fall of Roe v Wade the CRR was focused on creating a failsafe to Roe v. Wade by using lawsuits in state courts asking the courts to create rights to abortion under the state constitution.
Currently eleven states have these state constitutional “rights” to abortion: Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, and New Mexico.
The Center for Reproductive Rights’ Strategy
The CRR explains their state-by-state strategy in this website.
First, they explain that the state constitutional “rights” to abortion can be even more expansive than the federal rights. Since under the Roe v Wade standard, there really were no limits to the performance of abortions themselves, what CRR is referring to is the ability to use tax payer funds to commit and promote abortions.
The rulings from seven state supreme courts detailed in the Center’s report have gone beyond the federal undue burden standard to protect abortion rights or access more strongly than the federal Constitution.
Center for Reproductive Rights
Secondly, the CRR advocates using state constitutions and state courts in order to build a type of contagion effect, where pro-abortion court decisions in one state are used to convince other states to interpret their constitutions in a similar manner.
In these states, rulings by state supreme courts not only strengthened access to abortion within their state, but in many cases also contributed to positive outcomes in other states.
Center for Reproductive Rights
The CRR’s strategy is going to be tested in Florida for the first time after the fall of Roe v Wade, as Governor De Santis has vowed to fight a state judge who struck down Florida’s 15 week abortion ban based on a 1989 Florida Supreme Court decision that created a “right” to abortion under the state’s privacy protection.
The Coming Battle
Governor De Santis’ spokesman, Bryan Griffin, stated that the Governor will use this legal proceeding to seek a reversal of the state supreme court’s prior rulings: “We will appeal today’s ruling and ask the Florida Supreme Court to reverse its existing precedent regarding Florida’s right to privacy. The struggle for life is not over.”
What is clear is that American ProLifers need to develop a strategy that focuses on keeping state legislators and courts, specially state supreme courts accountable. Not only has the pro-abortion legal lobby been working on this but also the political left, which is building up a war chest to promote pro-abortion governors.
The CRR, which has been at the forefront of the legal fight against the right to life boasts of a $35 Million dollar annual budget and will surely continue to carry the fight into the states.
American ProLifers would do well to play close attention to CRR’s strategy and get in the fight at the local level, including addressing necessary judicial reform, without delay.
