A great day to begin

The end of Roe v. Wade is a day to celebrate!

I said this on social media and it bears repeating here: “It's a sunny Friday, the Shorebirds can put their wretched first half behind them starting tonight, and abortion is no longer justified by a wrongly-decided Supreme Court case from 49 years ago.

Good way to start the weekend.”

I probably shouldn’t get started on the Shorebirds and what seems like an alarming lack of talent at the lowest full-season rung of the system as we sift through the players signed at the very beginning (the first year or two) of the Orioles’ revitalized push for international talent. Those players were the guys that, by and large, the other teams that really invested in their Latin American programs had stopped pursuing, so you get players who can’t hit their weight or throw strikes consistently at the low-A level. Hope springs eternal, though, that a team which was 21-44 in the first half can turn it around to go 44-21 in the second half and realize my pre-season prediction of an even .500 team.

Maybe I’ll talk about that at more length in future posts, but for now let’s talk about the demise of Roe v. Wade and what that means.

When I say “wrongly decided…case” I basically come into agreement with people as diverse as the six who decided for Dobbs as well as the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, all who believed that Roe v. Wade was a faulty decision. (Surely Ginsburg would only have created a new excuse for abortion out of whole cloth.) I have said over the years on a regular basis to anyone who would listen that abortion, like more mundane subjects like speed limits and tax policy, should be a state issue based on the Tenth Amendment.

Sadly, here in Delaware we have one of the more liberal approaches to abortion based on a 2017 bill that stated, among other things, that, “A physician may terminate, assist in the termination of, or attempt the termination of a human pregnancy before viability… A physician may not terminate, attempt to terminate, or assist in the termination or attempt at termination of a human pregnancy otherwise than by birth after viability, unless, in the good faith medical judgment of the physician, the termination is necessary for the protection of the woman’s life or health or in the event of a fetal anomaly for which there is not a reasonable likelihood of the fetus’s sustained survival outside the uterus without extraordinary medical measures.” It replaced a more common-sense, “safe, legal, and rare” type law where abortion was restricted to cases of rape, incest, or jeopardy to the life of the mother.

That’s the state of play now; bear in mind this Delaware law was passed strictly in reaction to Donald Trump taking office. Obviously Democrats knew, or at least suspected, this day would come based on their belief that Republicans “stole” a SCOTUS seat from Barack Obama and that other justices were approaching retirement age and their replacements would be selected by Trump. In this case, they were prescient, although it took five years to happen.

I noted - once again on social media - that those on the Left had become lazy on the subject of abortion because they had the Roe v. Wade decision in their pocket. While they were roused a little bit by Donald Trump’s election and the possibility of conservatives gaining a majority on the Supreme Court, I don’t think they worked really hard at getting states to resist a pro-life push. Our side had the better arguments, and eventually enough hearts and minds were changed to get states to push back. Mississippi didn’t have to pass what in the minds of some was a hopeless law that outlawed abortion after 15 weeks, but they did it anyway and now that has paid off. Even moreso, I heard on the radio driving home that the state of Missouri would enforce the abortion ban they passed for just such an occasion. That’s called state’s rights.

So now the battle is going to shift to other states, and pro-abortion forces will need to begin their hard work of winning legislatures and getting their laws passed. In the meantime, our side needs to keep those swords sharp because the battle is a long way from over. In my mind, the first priority on this front is to elect a pro-life majority in Dover and Annapolis. I think the latter will be much harder than the former, meaning Maryland - especially the Western Shore - may become a “sanctuary state” for baby murder. But that doesn’t mean they can’t pass pro-life legislation at the county and city level based on Dobbs. Maybe that’s Seaford’s next move, or at least attempt to resurrect the fetal remains ordinance that sent opponents to electoral defeat this spring. I’m sure one candidate in the Attorney General race will allow Seaford more leeway and self-determination than the other.

With that: here I am, Substack. I’m going to risk letting the cat out of the bag a little bit by sharing this, but this is the sort of format and subject I’m infamous for spouting off anyway. For the most part, I’m going to free myself from the horserace aspect of politics and try and look at the big picture and how it may affect this small area.

I saw a great deal of celebration about the demise of Roe v. Wade all across my social media timeline except for one place - my adopted state’s elected officials. To me, that simply means we need new elected officials at the first opportunity because if we can’t trust our elected officials to protect the sanctity of life, what can we count on them for? Sorry, I’ll rend unto Caesar what is Caesar’s but when it comes to life and our God-given rights, we need those who will stand up to protect all that.

My goal was to write about 1,000 words to be in-depth on the subject, and that’s just about what I am going to hit. Thanks for reading.

Oh, and at some point I’ll decorate the place, don’t worry.