Editorial Excerpts, December 2020

In a strikingly clear message to those who would erode abortion rights in this nation, nearly 59 percent of Colorado voters struck down a proposed ban on abortions after 22 weeks of gestation.

Women and doctors should be making these medical decisions, not politicians. …

Women from across the nation come to Colorado seeking abortion care when their home state denies them the medical care they need. …

Opponents of abortion should take this loss for what it is and refocus their efforts on supporting pregnant women, especially teens, promoting access to birth control and comprehensive sexual education, and boosting adoption programs and foster care services. There is so much need.

And U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett should reconsider her position about abortion and stare decisis. Roe v. Wade is now a decades-old decision that laid the foundation for women’s rights in a country that at the time was ruled by men. Women for generations have relied upon the guarantee that the government (local, state, or federal) will not and can not interfere with their personal medical choices. To rip that foundation out from under women now, would erode this nation’s commitment to freedom and our faith in time-honored institutions like the Supreme Court. Yes, Justice Coney Barrett, Roe v. Wade is a super precedent that should remain in place. When states bring ill-conceived restrictions on abortion, our justices should follow the lead of Colorado voters and strike them down. …

Colorado has spoken and our justices should listen.

– The Denver Post, November 4, 2020

…Clearly, [Amy Coney] Barrett is personally opposed to abortion. While she was a law professor at Notre Dame University, she was a member of an anti-abortion faculty group and was one of hundreds of female professionals who signed an open letter to a meeting of Catholic bishops in 2015, expressing their belief in “the value of human life from conception to natural death.” In 2006 she was among a long list of signatories who declared in an anti-abortion ad in a South Bend, Ind., newspaper that they “oppose abortion on demand and defend the right to life from fertilization to natural death.” The more provocative second page of the ad, next to the signatures, said in part, “It’s time to put an end to the barbaric legacy of Roe v. Wade.” …

Taking away a woman’s right to decide for herself what she will do with a pregnancy before the fetus is viable would constitute a profound injustice and an upheaval in the lives of millions of women of child-bearing age. Nothing has changed medically since Roe that argues for taking away a woman’s control over her own body while a fetus is not viable.

The alarming thing is that the landscape for abortion availability even with Roe is bleak. Women who live in any of the states with just one abortion clinic face a daunting task of getting to them. And it is always poor or low-income women who face the most difficult obstacles to getting an abortion.

If Roe goes away, there will be states where abortion will be legal and states where it will be outlawed. And in the states where it’s outlawed, there will probably be more so-called self-managed abortions—either through illicitly obtained pills for a medication abortion or from some other self-induced method.

At this point, abortion is part of women’s health care in the U.S., and it should stay that way. Seemingly every major medical organization supports access to safe and legal abortion. So should the Supreme Court.

– Los Angeles Times, October 11, 2020