While the Supreme Court doesn’t publicly open its doors until next week, today it began meeting behind closed doors, and there were several outside who have waited for this moment to present their own case, so to speak. The Moral Outcry is a petition to end abortion, which has garnered a quarter of a million signatures in just over two years since its inception. The petition’s founders, Melinda and Denny Thybault, along with Attorney Allan Parker of The Justice Foundation, and many others, rallied at the courthouse today and released the petition as they prayed for the Supreme Court to take one of the cases that could overturn Roe v. Wade.
Live Action News first reported on The Moral Outcry petition in June of 2017 when it launched essentially as a grassroots effort, a long time coming in leading up to the opening of the Supreme Court this fall.
According to a news release from The Moral Outcry, “The Supreme Court Justices will be meeting a private conference in the court building [Oct.1]. This will not be open to the public, but they will decide some of which cases they agree to hear arguments in and which cases they reject for the 2019-2020 Term. The Supreme Court will publicly open its 2019-2020 Term on October 7 but the Justices will actually be in the Court on October 1.”
According to the news release, the rally’s purpose was to “call on the Supreme Court of the United States to use the Louisiana and Indiana cases currently before the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.”
Parker and The Moral Outcry sent out information on these two potential cases of the 2019-2020 term. Here is the explanation of the strategy. In brief, what may be considered are a potential sonogram law in Indiana requiring women to receive an ultrasound at least 18 hours before an abortion, and a potential hospital admitting privileges law in Louisiana, requiring any doctor committing abortions to have hospital admitting privileges.
According to Bloomberg, “[t]he Louisiana case’s history gives it a better-than-usual chance for review. In February, Roberts joined the four Democratic-appointed justices to temporarily keep the law from taking effect. Justices who vote for that type of stay order typically do so only when they are prepared to take up the underlying appeal.” Thus, it seems likely an abortion-related case will make its way to the high court this season, and the fate of abortion legality on a federal level may rest there.
Parker explained when the petition was first launched that even though a petition itself won’t reverse a law, “it can encourage the Supreme Court to exercise its discretion under the Writ of Certiorari to accept a case in which it could evaluate the facts and law in a fair and impartial manner and reach a conclusion that achieves justice by reversing its crimes against humanity.” Parker and pro-life leaders note there is precedent for the reversal of landmark Supreme Court cases that were once the law of the land. Notably, Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) upheld state laws on racial segregation, the “separate but equal” laws, (7-1). Over half a century later, in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
READ: U.S. abortion rate hits lowest point since Roe v. Wade
Melinda Thybault, the petition’s initial founder, the woman who refused to let the idea go, told Live Action News:
To represent the signatures of a quarter of a million Americans crying out for Roe to be overturned is one of my greatest honors. To be a voice for the children in the womb… priceless.
Today that petition’s quiet, behind-the-scenes work became a Washington, D.C. reality.
One of The Justice Foundation’s emails leading up to the rally summed up things quite clearly, ending this way:
This October 1 roll-out is to let America know that abortion is a crime against humanity, that new evidence shows that life begins at conception, that we now know women are hurt by abortion, and that the Safe Haven laws are a better alternative so that no woman has to have an abortion to be free from unwanted child care. Finally, there are a million people desperately waiting to adopt newborn children.
The Moral Outcry Petition is simple: Don’t kill the baby – Don’t hurt yourself – Use the Safe Haven law – The babies will find a loving home with the million couples waiting to adopt newborns.
WE LOVE THEM ALL! THE MOTHER, THE CHILD AND THE FAMILIES WHO WANT TO ADOPT CHILDREN. WE LOVE THEM ALL!
The entire petition to the Court can be read here.
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