Oxon Hill, MD – Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser emphasized the importance of human dignity at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Thursday morning and argued that “to make America great again, Roe must go; abortion must end.”
She reminded the crowd of the history of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.
Dannenfelser called the ruling “a profound betrayal of America’s foundational promises,” adding that, “in just one fateful day, that decision and its companion decision Doe v. Bolton swept away every single law in this nation protecting unborn children.”
She quoted a former clerk for liberal Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, Edward Lazarus, who said, “Roe borders on the indefensible. A constitutional right to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in constitutional text, history, or precedent.”
“Instead of deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed, the Court, in an act of extreme hubris, disenfranchised every American and our representatives, imposing abortion on demand through birth as the national status quo,” Dannenfelser lamented. “Since 1973 we have collectively destroyed 60 million boys and girls intended for this world – each one made, as President Trump said in his State of the Union message the other day, in the holy image of God.”
After critiquing the legal foundation of the decision, she pointed to its “logical conclusion,” namely, the recent push for late-term abortion from Democrats
The recent controversy over late-term abortion began in New York and Virginia last month when a measure that would permit abortions at “any time” to protect “a patient’s life or health” was signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) then made some remarks that appeared to be defending leaving an infant born alive after an attempted abortion to die when he was asked about the debate over Virginia House of Delegates member Kathy Tran’s (D-Fairfax) late-term abortion bill. Tran initially said that her bill allowed abortion even after the woman goes into labor.
“They would extend abortion to the point when a mother is even in labor,” Dannenfelser said of Democrats, “extend that so-called right (up) to the baby’s birthday.”
She condemned the Senate’s recent failure to pass the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” which would have put in place legal protections for infants born alive after an attempted abortion.
However, Dannenfelser said that the Democrats’ refusal to back such a commonsense measure was clarifying.
“We are having a national conversation about life and protecting it or not in a way that we have never before, not since Roe v. Wade,” she said. “We’re witnessing panic, desperation, and overreach on the other side that is typical of a dying cause. Life is winning everywhere in the hearts and minds of Americans.”
She cited a recent Marist poll that was taken after the Democrats' late-term abortion push which found that Americans are now just as likely to identify as “pro-life” (47 percent) as “pro-choice” (47 percent). This marked a huge increase in that identification from a similar poll the month prior which found Americans were “more likely to identify as pro-choice than as pro-life by 17 percentage points (55 to 38 percent).”
She also praised President Trump’s work on the issue, calling him the most “productive, pro-life president in history.”