“Roe v. Wade” turned 50 years old on Sunday, January 22nd. This is the infamous U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively gave us abortion on demand (when you add the impact of its companion decision of the same day, “Doe v. Bolton.”) Here are some comments from some pro-life leaders on the fallout from 50 years of “Roe.”

*Abby Johnson, former head of a Planned Parenthood clinic and one-time “Planned Parenthood Employee of the Year,” is strongly pro-life today because she saw a sonogram of an abortion in her own clinic. This wasn’t a blob of tissue fighting for his life—it was a baby.

She gave me a statement (through email to Jerry Newcombe on 1/20/23)  for this article on 50 years of legalized abortion in America:

“One of the biggest fallouts from Roe is that every woman’s bathroom will now become an abortion clinic if she decides to use the abortion pill to end her unwanted or unplanned pregnancy.”

These pills are marketed as safe. But she warns,

“The use of the abortion pill is about to skyrocket and I don’t think the nation is ready for both emotional and physical ramifications of such sweeping actions. I think it’s going to be horrific, and the pro-life movement needs to be there for these women who need love the most when they are considering abortion and in the aftermath of their decision.”

*Father Frank Pavone, founder and director of Priests for Life, who was recently “laicized” by the Vatican, told me through an email (1/22/23):

“Roe v. Wade has distorted our entire process of self-governance, replacing the will of the people with the imposition of a fake Constitutional right, and allowing abortion, as the only medical procedure with such a status, to grotesquely disfigure everything from city council meetings to Supreme Court confirmation processes.”

*Eric Scheidler, the son of long-time abortion foe Joe Scheidler, heads up the Pro-Life Action League in Aurora, Illinois. He sent me an email (1/23/23):

“The nearly 50 years of abortion on demand forced on the American people by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision have had a devastating impact on our culture. If Roe had been reversed much earlier — for example, in 1992 when the Casey v. Planned Parenthood case instead reaffirmed Roe — then it would have been much easier to repair that damage. But after two generations of abortion without limits, one of the most extreme policies on the face of the Earth, we have a scene of devastation on our hands. That means the Christians and all Americans of good will need to get involved in not just promoting pro-life laws, but in promoting such fundamentals as marriage, the blessings of children, and the rebuilding of our support communities.”

*“Abortion is bad for women and babies,” notes the niece of Martin Luther King, Jr. She admits she had two abortions—and now is so grateful for the forgiveness of Jesus in her life. She warns against others making this same mistake. In fact, Evangelist Alveda King of told me in a recent radio segment, “Life should be celebrated and acknowledged and appreciated from the womb to the tomb into eternity.” Alveda has now started the organization, “Speak for Life.”

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

Ever since the unprecedented leak of an early draft of the Dobbs decision from the U.S. Supreme Court which may overturn Roe v. Wade, the “shock troops of tolerance” have been busy interrupting church services. And they have done much destruction of crisis pregnancy centers.

They claim to be “pro-choice,” but choice involves options. And these people want to make sure women make only one choice—the choice of abortion. When there’s only one choice, then “pro-choice” is an oxymoron.

Since May 2, when the draft decision was leaked, consider what has happened:

• There have been numerous disruptions of church services, usually Catholic ones. However, even Joel Osteen’s church service was interrupted by topless promoters of abortion.

• There have been illegal protests in front of the homes of conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justices to intimidate them to change their opinion.

• There have been at least 59 attacks on crisis pregnancy centers, which are all funded by private donations and which do the Lord’s work to provide loving alternatives to abortion.

Many of these attacks have been done through an ad hoc organization called “Jane’s Revenge.”

The name would imply revenge on behalf of “Jane Roe” from the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court pro-abortion decision, Roe v. Wade. Jane’s Revenge declares open season on crisis pregnancy centers across the nation:

“From here forward, any anti-choice group who closes their doors, and stops operating will no longer be a target. But until you do, it’s open season, and we know where your operations are. The infrastructure of the enslavers will not survive. We will never stop, back down, slow down, or retreat.”

A friend of mine works in a crisis pregnancy center. She told me in an email over the weekend: “I worked in the Emergency Dept as a RN for 25 years with police security, but I never dreamed that working at a pro-life clinic would be a high risk job!”

And this damage is being done in the name of Jane Roe? As the record shows, Jane Roe’s identity was revealed in 1987, and her name was Norma McCorvey. It turns out McCorvey had not been raped (as claimed in the case). She had gotten pregnant from her boyfriend, and she just wanted an abortion.

ACLU attorney Sarah Weddington lied to her as she assured McCorvey she could get an abortion, but what Weddington really wanted was McCorvey’s participation in what became Roe v. Wade.

Then in the late 1990s, something amazing happened. Norma McCorvey made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and came to oppose abortion. Thus, Roe came to agree with Wade. Henry Wade had been the District Attorney of Dallas County, and Roe v. Wade challenged Texas’s pro-life law.

Norma McCorvey wrote her story in her 1997 book, Won By Love (with co-author Gary Thomas). The subtitle of that book is “Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade Speaks Out for the Unborn as She Shares Her New Conviction for Life.”

And now, in the name of Jane Roe, anarchists and ANTIFA-types are carrying out acts of vandalism and damage of pregnancy centers that simply exist to provide loving alternatives to abortion.

One man who knew McCorvey, who died in 2017, is Father Frank Pavone, the president of Priests for Life. He even baptized her and spent time sharing Scriptures and Church teaching with her.

I asked him for a comment on the former “Jane Roe” since these groups are doing damage to try and disrupt pro-life work in her name. Father Pavone told me:

“As for Norma McCorvey, hers was a life of repentance, not of revenge. She wouldn’t have needed to take ‘revenge’ on pro-life people anyway, because she was one of us. She would have abhorred the way the pro-abortion people are acting now. In fact, she didn’t like them even when she was on their side. She thought they were arrogant and disrespectful of her.”

He adds,

“The abortion supporters were handed abortion-on-demand on a silver platter by Roe v. Wade. They didn’t have to engage in the laborious, tedious process of elections, lobbying, debating, persuading and lawmaking. Instead, a ‘constitutional right’ was just created for them.

Now that it is being taken away, they whine and stomp their feet like a child.”

Where is the U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in all this? When is he going to act against this intimidation? Our nation’s founders said that the Creator has endowed us with “unalienable rights”—first among these is “the right to life.”

Father Pavone has the final word: “Of course, their attacks on our churches are because when we restrict abortion, they perceive it as an attack on theirs. The abortion clinics are their churches, abortion-on-demand is their dogma, and abortion itself is their sacrament. May they be given the grace of repentance.”

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

Another legal challenge to ObamaCare that raises crucial questions related to other pro-life cases awaits a federal court decision within the next few months.

March for Life has challenged the Obama administration’s mandate to provide free insurance coverage for contraception and abortion-causing drugs on a pro-life organization. ObamaCare, which forces employers – regardless of their moral convictions – to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs under threat of heavy financial penalties, has been under fire from pro-life organizations and Christian business owners.

Alliance Defending Freedom is representing March for Life in the case. Elissa Graves, the ADF attorney on hand for arguments in federal district court in Washington, DC, tells OneNewsNow, “March for Life is an organization that holds 100-percent pro-life views based on science and ethics instead of religion. It advocates for life at all stages which includes from conception until death. Some of these drugs do have effect after conception.”

As a pro-life organization, the attorney says, “March for Life should not be forced to help destroy life.”

According to Graves, the presiding judge was very engaged during the court proceedings. “The judge was very interested in arguments for both sides and seemed to really know the arguments and asked a lot of great questions of both sides,” she offers.

A similar lawsuit was brought by Priests for Life, a Catholic pro-life group that also objects to the mandate on religious grounds. Graves maintains that if courts can force coverage on groups like these two, they can likely compel all to do so.

ADF senior legal counsel Matt Bowman, who presented arguments Wednesday on behalf of March for Life said, “Pro-life organizations must be free to operate according to the beliefs they espouse. March for Life was founded to oppose the tragedy of abortion – the very thing the government is forcing the organization to provide through its health insurance plan.”

Hobby Lobby, in a high-profile Supreme Court case ruling in June, won the right to exclude coverage for abortion-causing drugs on religious grounds.

Bowman added: “The government cannot selectively punish organizations that wish to abide by their beliefs.”

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled today that the Christian-run Hobby Lobby doesn’t have to obey the HHS mandate that is a part of Obamacare that requires businesses to pay for abortion causing drugs in their employee health care plans.

The Obama administration was attempting to make Hobby Lobby and thousands of pro-life businesses and organizations comply with the HHS mandate that compels religious companies to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs for their employees. However, the U.S. Supreme Court today issued a favorable ruling in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a landmark case addressing the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of business owners to operate their family companies without violating their deeply held religious convictions.

Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Samuel Alito handed down the decision for the high court, saying, “The Supreme Court holds government can’t require closely held corporations with religious owners to provide contraception coverage.”

“HHS’s contraception mandate substantially burdens the exercise of religion,” the decision reads, adding that the “decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to mean that all insurance mandates.” The opinion said the “plain terms of Religious Freedom Restoration Act” are “perfectly clear.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion saying that government itself could provide the coverage for contraception and the abortion-causing drugs if a company declines to do so.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a dissent that claims the decision is “of startling breadth,” a claim the majority denies. The major decision indicates it applies to the abortion mandate, not blood transfusions or other practices to which people may have religious objections.

The Hobby Lobby decision only applies to companies, including Conestoga Wood Specialties, which had a companion case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Non-profit groups like Priests for Life and Little Sisters are still waiting for a ruling about their right to opt out of the mandate.

The Obama administration said it was confident it would prevail, saying, “We believe this requirement is lawful…and are confident the Supreme Court will agree.”

Responding to the decision, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel David Cortman told LifeNews: “Americans don’t surrender their freedom by opening a family business. In its decision today, the Supreme Court affirmed that all Americans, including family business owners, must be free to live and work consistently with their beliefs without fear of punishment by the government. In a free and diverse society, we respect the freedom to live out our convictions. For the Hahns and the Greens, that means not being forced to participate in distributing potentially life-terminating drugs and devices.”

In July, a federal court granted Hobby Lobby a preliminary injunction against the HHS abortion-drug mandate. The injunction prevented the Obama administration from enforcing the mandate against the Christian company, but the Obama administration appealed that ruling. Hobby Lobby could have paid as much as $1.3 million each day in fines for refusing to pay for birth control or abortion-causing drugs under the mandate.

After the appeals court ruling, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton issued a preliminary injunction and stayed the case until Oct. 1 to give the Obama administration time to appeal the decision.

In an opinion read from the bench, the court said, “There is a substantial public interest in ensuring that no individual or corporation has their legs cut out from under them while these difficult issues are resolved.”

A December 2013 Rasmussen Reports poll shows Americans disagree with forcing companies like Hobby Lobby to obey the mandate.

“Half of voters now oppose a government requirement that employers provide health insurance with free contraceptives for their female employees,” Rasmussen reports.

The poll found: “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 38 percent of Likely U.S. Voters still believe businesses should be required by law to provide health insurance that covers all government-approved contraceptives for women without co-payments or other charges to the patient.

Fifty-one percent (51 percent) disagree and say employers should not be required to provide health insurance with this type of coverage. Eleven percent (11 percent) are not sure.”

Another recent poll found 59 percent of Americans disagree with the mandate.

The Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, grew their family business out of their garage. They now own stores in 41 states employing more than 16,000 full time employees. They have always operated their business according to their faith.

Kristina Arriaga, Executive Director of the Becket Fund, tells LifeNews, “In fact, the Greens pay salaries that start at twice the minimum wage and offer excellent benefits, as well as a healthcare package which includes almost all of the contraceptives now mandated by the Affordable Care Act. Their only objection is to 4 drugs and devices which, the government itself concedes, can terminate an embryo.”

“Their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act should be protected by the government. Instead, the government has threatened them with fines and fought them all the way to the Supreme Court,” Arriaga added.

“The government has already exempted tens of millions of Americans from complying with the mandate that forces employers to provide certain specific drugs and devices. However, it refuses to accommodate the Green family because the Green family’s objections are religious.  We believe that the government’s position is not only extreme and unconstitutional; it presents a grave danger to our freedoms,” she continued.

“My family and I are encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide our case,” said Mr. Green, Hobby Lobby’s founder and CEO.  “This legal challenge has always remained about one thing and one thing only: the right of our family businesses to live out our sincere and deeply held religious convictions as guaranteed by the law and the Constitution. Business owners should not have to choose between violating their faith and violating the law.”

This article was originally posted at the LifeNews.com blog.