The sight of Planned Parenthood doctors discussing the sale of aborted babies’ body parts, while they finished their lunches and enjoyed glasses of wine, shocked many Americans into awareness of the grisly business that the abortion industry engages in. >>
Two videos posted on YouTube last July, the result of a nearly three-year investigation by the Center for Medical Progress, exposed Planned Parenthood’s unconscionable practices and made the case that it is time to cut off all tax-payer funding to the so-called “non-profit.” Their claim to be providing “health services” to women garners them more than $500 million in government funds annually, or just over 40 percent of their national budget.

In the end, for Planned Parenthood, it is all about the bottom line. In the second undercover video, Dr. Mary Gatter, PP’s Medical Directors’ Council President, is shown discussing payments for baby body parts and offering to use a “less crunchy technique” to get more intact body organs. Gatter suggested $100 per “specimen” is not enough: “Let me just figure out what others are getting, and if this is in the ballpark, then it’s fine, if it’s still low, then we can bump it up,” she says. “I want a Lamborghini.” Dr. Gatter apparently had no fear of the law that makes it a federal felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to $500,000, for the sale or purchase of human fetal tissue.

As horrific as this story is, it needs to be viewed within the larger context. Thanks to the judicial overreach of the highest court in the land, America is the only Western industrialized nation that has so few restrictions on abortion, in spite of the fact that only a fraction of Americans support our current liberal abortion laws. Since the Supreme Court made abortion legal across the land in 1973, close to 57.5 million babies have been mercilessly extracted from their mothers wombs—in pieces—and yet we claim to be a nation governed by laws.

The egregious nature of the Supreme Court’s judicial activism is on full display in the three key decisions, Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that have brought the death of these innocents, and it is worth taking a look at these decisions to understand more clearly the nature of the Court’s judicial overreach.

In Roe v. Wade the Court adhered to the notion that the Constitution is a “living document,” creating a new “right” that is nowhere found in the text of the Constitution. Citing Supreme Court cases that erroneously established a broad constitutional right to privacy, the Court asserted that this right “is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” In The Heritage Foundation’s analysis of this case, they note that Roe “is infamous not only for its foundationless assertions about the meaning of the Due Process Clause,” but Justice Blackmun’s opinion also sets a high-water mark for its “flawed historical analysis.” Skipping back to ancient societies and pagan cultures that practiced infanticide to find justification for his opinion, Blackmun ignored the 36 laws that placed limits on abortion at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, which contains the Due Process Clause. As dissenting Justice Byron White wrote, this decision was “an exercise of raw judicial power.”

The companion case to Roe v. Wade is Doe v. Bolton. In his Roe opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun instructed that Roe and Doe “are to be read together.” He also wrote the opinion for Doe v. Bolton, which removed any doubts as to whether the Court intended to place any restrictions on abortions. The states were instructed to permit abortions even after “viability” of the baby, if in the doctor’s medical judgment the woman’s health was in jeopardy, and that judgment was to be “exercised in the light of all factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to the wellbeing of the patient.”

Doe v. Bolton is also a case of judicial activism rooted in the notion of a “living” constitution.” The Court expanded the “right” for women to abort their babies based on the emotional and psychological “well-being” of the mother, thus giving justification for abortion in virtually every instance of an unwanted pregnancy.

Both Roe and Doe were decided in 1973. The other major abortion case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, was decided almost 20 years later in 1992. When asked to consider the issue of abortion again, the Supreme Court affirmed its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade by a vote of 5-4. As The Heritage Foundation observes, this case, too, is clearly an example of judicial activism because “the majority’s actions amount to judicial imperialism, expanding the judiciary beyond its constitutional limits. The judges clearly engaged in judicial hubris, making claims of judicial supremacy by declaring that the Court has the authority to ‘decide’ for the American people ‘their constitutional cases and speak before all others for their constitutional ideals.’”

It is time to end the pride and arrogance of the Supreme Court and return it to its true constitutional role—one that, as the Founders envisioned it, is subservient to the will of the people and their duly elected representatives. Bear in mind when you vote in 2016, that with a President and Senate majority that respect our constitution, the justices who retire during the next administration could be replaced by jurists who will humbly look to the Constitution for their guidance and who will not be enticed to succumb to the temptation to exercise “raw judicial power.”