The Tragedy of Dobbs

I don’t mean to take over this blog discussing abortion. I really don’t. But it pulls at me to write from my heart about my opinion on the subject.

First, let me say I grew up in a wonderfully warm and loving small town in Texas. Everyone went to church on Sunday regardless of their belief in God, everyone ate BBQ and fried chicken, and we all carried around guns and fired guns in ranges and hunted our deer. This was my life, and abortion was some evil tool of liberals trying to kill babies. We Christians loved children and anyone who thought otherwise live in California.

I have grown since then, and instead of things becoming more black or white, they have become more grey. I am a healthcare attorney so this matter cuts deeply to the heart of what it is to do no harm, and I’m representing scared and confused groups and doctors who just don’t want to be sued or hauled to jail. They all want to help and not hurt, and they, too, want to heal. This remains true even for abortion providers. They are not murderers.

As a lawyer who prides herself on ethical standards, a breach of trust to the degree to release a draft opinion to the public before publication is also shocking and unheard of. Sure, there have been leaks in the past, but not of this magnitude. So it’s a double whammy of surprises.

I don’t know anyone who associates abortion with anything positive. The court states in this draft that abortion presents a “profound moral question.” I think at least that statement is somewhat fair. It’s certainly a divisive issue.  No one is “pro-abortion.” Basically we can agree, I think, that if an abortion occurs, something has gone wrong. Never does a women skip to the abortion clinic on a beautiful Spring day and then go out for ice cream humming pop songs. Often it’s a heavy and tragic situation. Perhaps there is an unviable pregnancy, a fetus is born without important organs vital to survival, or a young girl who is raped by a stranger or even a family member. A woman should not be forced to birth her uncle or rapist’s baby, of that I’m sure. And to the people who say “oh, these state laws make concessions for those situations,” that is not true. Many state laws have ZERO room for these situations. It’s morphed into an all or none position.

I have my own belief about such issues, which as a free woman I have the right to feel, about when an abortion may be necessary and important, and I have my own location on the wheel of this mortal conundrum.  It’s not something to throw around, or to be used to “eliminate a problem” that is not there. I certainly would not advocate that women can knowingly carry perfectly healthy babies to almost full term, simply change their mind, and then – meh- abort them on a whim. That would be sociopathic. I bet that reality is very slim and shouldn’t be the marker here.

And we can talk all day about “if you care about life, what about education and Medicaid and foster children and health care and mental health?”  But the fact remains that people are so rooted in their positions that logic simply doesn’t matter anymore, and civil discourse becomes, as it has generally been over the last four years, simply toxic. If you disagree with someone, you are cancelled, vilified, or blacklisted. It becomes about black and white, right vs wrong, Christian vs non-Christian. I suppose if a child is born disabled, and they can’t get access to the right kind of health services, that’s no longer our problem as a nation? They were born, so that’s the big win, and if they live a miserable lonely life with no access to care or help or a family who loves them, who get caught up in drugs and gangs just to feel a part of something, that’s just not our problem. We have gone to our prayer meetings and attended our rallies and we go to sleep at night very sure of ourselves, so don’t rock the boat talking about mentally unstable children. There are people who take care of that.

My heart aches.

I love babies.  Who doesn’t love babies? I adore the smell, the wiggles, the feel of being a mother. And no, I didn’t have an abortion, thank God, because my children were healthy and I carried them full term. But not every woman is so lucky.  If you are robbing them of the right over their own body to have a trained surgeon work with them during the most painful time in their life to care for their medical needs, who will they turn to?  Doctors will not get training in this area.  Don’t kid yourself. They won’t receive the instruction in residency and fellowship. Insurance companies won’t cover the work. We live in a litigious society, and not only will doctors be sued, but maybe arrested. Women will be turned down at all costs, and forced to travel great distances and perhaps even to another country to have an unviable fetus taken out of their womb that they likely wanted very much but such child isn’t able to live and breathe in our earthly world. Imagine the grief of this mother, who lost this child before he or she was even born, who must now add insult to injury (and risk even death) to resolve it.

I am a devoted Christian.  I believe with my full heart that Jesus was the greatest teacher who ever lived – the point where I devote my life to his teachings. I do not believe Jesus would be accepting of this state of our world where we vilify and attack each other about every possible topic. We are a lost people, and I breathe in heavy sighs at that sad reality. No, of course Jesus didn’t condone murder. But I believe he would want women to have safe healthcare.

And when a woman weeps over losing a child at any stage, whether it’s in the womb or after, Jesus also weeps.

We cannot leave something so fundamental to the whim of the state house run by politicians. The opinion says that Roe and Casey got it wrong, that protecting abortion is not in the constitution, and that they “leave this authority to the people and their elected representatives.” Many rights that we have discovered to be important to our citizens are not, in fact, explicitly written in the Constitution, and we have no trust in politicians to represent the people. This whittling down of human rights has no end. Will contraception be next? Can women be trusted to own a home, have a credit card, or even vote?  If we are rolling back rights, how far will we go?  Is discrimination something we also need to “leave to the states?” This means we must be more vigilant to vote, encourage other like minds to vote, and have our voices heard loudly and clearly. The court will not protect long-standing stare decisis principles any longer. It’s up to us. But can we trust that even if we vote in the right people and get some laws changed, we can change the tide if the courts will not hold the very principles the judiciary has held dear for centuries? Courts are not supposed to be political. But this is new era.

Our country is better than this.  We are built on freedom and independence, holding all people equal. We have made progress in so many ways and we have a long way to go.  But removing protections and saying “this is a state issue” isn’t the solution.  It’s setting our country back hundreds of years, and it simply hurts women in the process.

I am pro baby.  I am pro woman.  I am pro life.  But there is a need and an important role for abortion in our society, period.  Removing access to it hurts us all. I will vote, I will get people out to vote, and we will have to live with the reality that we create.

May God have mercy on our souls in the process.

What is the Real Heartbeat of our Society? Freedom

This has been quite a week as the abortion law has passed in the Texas legislature granting the authority to private citizens to turn into bounty hunters, without any requirement of personal damages or standing, to uphold a law that may or may not be constitutional.


First of all, unless you are a sociopath serial killer, people in the world do not want to hurt children. It’s an innate instinct as a human being to protect another person who is vulnerable. If there is a child on the side of the road crying, someone will come pick up that child, look around for a parent, make sure that child doesn’t toddle out on the highway, no matter if they are Republican, Democrat, Muslim, Jew, or Christian. We are humans, and we recognize the plight of the helpless, and we are all wired to help those who area in need. I’ve never met one person who was like “unleash the killings upon the children! Who wants a beer?” Tragedies have forever highlighted the power of community, and as Mr. Rodgers has famously said, look for the helpers.


Abortion is complicated as different people believe that life “begins” at different points, and that a woman has the right to control her own body (but up to a point, depending on when you believe life begins), just like a person has a right to defend their own life in certain situations when their own life is threatened but has to be cautious about using deadly force. There are legal treaties and legal case law miles long about this issue. So for us to boil it down to “right vs wrong” or one way is right and one is simply wrong without further analysis and compassion is simply foolish.
But then again, I’m a lawyer and I’m trained to look at things from both sides.


As Richard Epstein pointed out in an article in the Hoover Institute, What is a person? And what are the justifications that make it lawful to kill another person? On one hand, abortion advocates indicate no one becomes a person until he or she is outside the womb. When a woman is pregnant, the argument is that it’s not a human inside of her, it’s still part of the mother. That claim brings fierce responses by anti-abortion advocates, who say the DNA of the child is distinct from that of the mother and father, and that it is thus absurd to claim that an unborn child with a heartbeat does not have the status of an independent person.


I am in a unique position to understand this debate. My children attend a private Christian school, filled with parents who are passionate about this issue on both sides. I was born and raised in a small Texas town where things seem very black and white. Where you can buy deer corn on every corner, you go to church whether you really believe or not, and things seem so simple when you’re around those who feel the exact same as you do. And yet many people cannot see past their own bias.


Will we come to agreement on this issue? Likely not. So this will always be a burning issue not only in humanity, but in our own family and friend circles.


But in some cases, regardless of your feelings on abortion, common sense should prevail. What about women who are raped, or molested by an uncle and end up getting pregnant and don’t know it quickly enough in a six week period because they are already in trauma and working non-stop and they drink too much and eat too much and they thought that weight gain or nausea wasn’t possibly the result of a pregnancy. Must that woman be forced to bear her rapist’s child? Or must that woman secretly try and find her way to another state to deal with this horrific tragedy? And if she is a minority and poor and has no clue how to navigate this system, because if she takes more than a day off of work she will get fired, and she can’t pay for rent in a house she shares with her sick mother and two-year old child, is she just stuck, and must bear the child of her uncle the rapist? Surely we can at least see the banality of the right vs wrong, one size fits all mentality when life has shades of gray.


But if we can step aside from the abortion debate for a moment, let’s discuss the broader reach of this law that is the most disturbing.


What is most concerning to me is the sweeping bravado to think that the legislature can ignore the way our system of justice works in this country. It has long stood as precedence that that in order to sue another individual for a tort, or because a person is violating a particular law, the plaintiff must be personally harmed and have standing to bring a lawsuit, and there must be damages as a part of the analysis that are compensatory. You must assert that claim when bringing such suit, and there is a burden of knowledge (and/or legal fees to get help in this process) in order to go down this path. If you just go around suing each other when it’s not your business, you have no legal standing, and you have no personal damages, and a motion to dismiss is the appropriate response. That fight will be shut down quickly enough. There are even counterclaims specifically designed to punish those that file frivolous lawsuits. Or at least the courts will issue stays if a law changes to keep the status quo intact in order to avoid harm until things are more sorted. But not in this case.


This Texas law is different from previous bans in that it prohibits the state from enforcing the ban, instead authorizing private citizens to bring civil suits against anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion. It’s a true bounty hunter situation at hand here. This is ludicrous. We are Americans, not scared Germans, afraid of Nazi soldiers, where everyone is informing on their neighbors’ actions.


Part of any legal claim that is compensable under the law is that it isn’t something a person is just intending to do, or thinking about doing, but actually completes the action. If someone says “I’m going to kill my asshole ex-husband” or “I’m thinking of committing tax fraud” that isn’t actionable by law unless the ex-husband turns up in a ditch and they find the murder weapon in your desk drawer or if they prove you actually defrauded the government. But in this statute, the language says that you can bring a claim if you know that someone intends to procure an abortion or aid and abet one. That should scare us all.


The rule of law is really whatever the Texas legislature believes it is, and apparently the highest court of the land just doesn’t want to get involved. This is the classic law school example of a “slippery slope.” Today it’s abortion, but tomorrow it’s religious freedom, right to bear arms, and individual liberty. If you are okay with it now when it suits your purposes, how will you feel when the tables are turned?


We should all care. We live in a civilized society where we don’t go around hiding in our homes, pointing fingers at our neighbors without evidence, with not only protection of the law but a financial incentive to do so. We have an obligation to speak up against this injustice before it spreads like the cancer that it is. And the fact is, lower-income women, many minorities or immigrants, without large chests of money are the ones who are affected the most. They are also vulnerable, and need protection.


I will take a stand against this law as a Texan. I will take a stand against this law as a lawyer. And I will take a stand against this law as a woman who lives in a nation of freedom.

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