Last week when President Trump announced his nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the Texas abortion industry responded with an impressive new level of hysteria, seeming to attempt to make up for their loss of public support.
Planned Parenthood Texas and NARAL Pro-Choice Texas social media pages have posted about little else since the announcement, desperately calling for their supporters to contact their elected officials in a last ditch attempt to stop the Trump administration from appointing a justice who might redirect current abortion jurisprudence. Their concerns range from the judge’s privately held personal opinions regarding abortion to his past ruling regarding a minor’s request for the government to facilitate her access to an elective abortion. Laughably, the abortion industry has also targeted the distinguished Judge Kavanaugh as someone in possession of such defects as having a “frat boy name” and loving the game of baseball.
The truth is that abortion proponents would have thrown an identical tantrum no matter which candidate President Trump would have nominated from his short list. Crowds were gathered outside the Supreme Court hours before the announcement with signs prepared to decry any of Trump’s four potential nominees. Minutes after the announcement, hasty press releases and e-mail alerts were sent out with numerous grammatical errors and incorrect pronouns, including one even displaying “XX” in place of the nominee’s name. A quick search of #BrettKavanaughScandals on Twitter reveals the amusement Pro-Life conservatives are finding in this disingenuous meltdown and attempt to manufacture public outrage.
Pro-Life Texans can find more than amusement in the political hysteria; we can also find encouragement in the truth that the anti-Life movement does honestly fear that elective abortion could be leaving Texas. Furthermore, Pro-Lifers can be encouraged that the new tenor of the abortion industry’s rhetoric seems to be an attempt to recapture their slipping control of the public conversation around abortion. With Kavanaugh’s nomination, anti-Life activists are no longer debating whether Roe v. Wade will be struck down, but rather what they will do when the opinion collapses. They see the writing on the wall and recognize that the tide seems to have turned in favor of protecting preborn children, not only in the Supreme Court but also in the court of public opinion. Their loss in the latter may explain why they have now resorted to such dramatic and unprecedented rhetoric.
Although polls show that Americans are still generally divided over the issue of abortion, a majority of Americans do want to protect innocent human Life in the womb. Only 16% of American adults believe that “abortion should be available to a woman any time she wants one during her entire pregnancy” (Marist poll, 2017), a far cry from the 72% of the public Planned Parenthood has been said supports the “right” to abortion on demand established by Roe v Wade. A full 18% of American men support radical abortion rights compared to just 13% of American women, belying the false narrative that overturning Roe would be an action in opposition to what women want for themselves. Furthermore, a Gallup poll conducted just this year shows that a majority of Americans believe that abortion “should be legal in only a few or no circumstances”. The public hullabaloo from abortion proponents may be an eleventh-hour effort to whip public opinion into a more favorable position.
The Texas abortion industry sees the moral and cultural ground shrinking under their feet as Pro-Life Texans continue to educate the public about the truth of elective abortion. As science continues to progress and we understand more and more about the humanity of the preborn child, more people are forced to confront the inhumanity of abortion. Texas Right to Life remains cautiously optimistic about Judge Kavanaugh, and we are confident that regardless of the outcome of this particular nomination, passionate and hard-working Pro-Life Texans will help end legal abortion in our state and in our nation.