REVERSING ROE
Pro-life against abortion
Pro-choice in favor of abortion rights
1. What is the Representative from Texas’ central argument in the documentary’s
opening scenes?
There is no reason of making abortion more and more difficult/placing more restrictions on
abortion, because it will only drive women back into the shadows of illegal abortion (they will
not stop having them), which are much more dangerous.
2. When was the last decade in which abortion was illegal in the United States?
The 60’s.
3. In what landmark court case was abortion “legalized?”
Legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade.
4. In the 1960s if women needed to have an abortion, what would they need to do?
Therapeutic abortion is done, on the basis of the mental and emotional disturbance to the patient
(if they said: “I’m going to kill myself”, the doctor supposed the woman’s life was at stake).
Women had to go before a committee of male doctors to ask for abortion; and women were often
treated very badly (“You can get abortion if you agree to be sterilized” or “We don’t want to
clean up your mess”).
If you were a wealthy white woman, it was easier to get access to the procedure and it would be
called therapeutic abortion.
(Or had to go to another country.)
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5. What did pro-choice women do in mass to get their message across on the issue of
abortion?
They started speaking openly in public meetings to tell their stories.
+ They started demonstrating in mass and demanded free choice.
6. What does Eleanor Holmes Norton (Democrat U.S. Congresswoman) mean when
she states, “If you didn’t have control over your own body, then we weren’t sure
what rights we could ask for.”?
Women’s right has been put in place to decrease inequality between men and women. The state
means to control our bodies. But the basis of democracy = everyone controls its own body.
Early feminists took abortion as the central issue to fight for, and if they don’t have this right,
they are not going to get any other right.
7. What future Republican President (then governor of California) signed a bill into
law to lessen the restrictions on abortion in 1968 and how does that contradict
today’s Republican party?
Ronald Reagan signed a reform bill.
Originally, it was the Republican Party that was the pro-choice party. And there were states with
Republican’s governors who passed abortion reforms.
Contradictory : because today it’s the Republican party who’s pro-life, they changed.
8. Compare Dr. Curtis Boyd’s response as to what abortion is to what Mr. John Seago
(Texas Right to Life representative) says abortion is.
Boyd: (He is religious, and he believes the basic Christian teaching is compassion and service.
He thought he could do this and make a difference taking the risk. Now he’s still trying to teach
and pass on what he’s doing to as many young doctors as he can.) “My philosophy is that the
goal in providing abortions is to assist the woman in making the best decision she can for her and
her life, whatever that takes.”
Seago: “The most important moral question of the abortion debate is, What is in the womb? Is it
a person? Does it deserve our moral attention and protection or not? In the pro-life movement,
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we are outraged because we believe that elective abortion is the taking of an innocent human life.
That is an act of injustice that can be stopped, and that needs to be stopped.
Boyd: “Women continue a pregnancy and have a baby, because they want a baby at that time.
And they have abortions because they don’t want to be pregnant at that time in their life for their
own, sufficient reasons.”
9. What are some of the arguments presented by the pro-life representatives in Texas?
The state of Texas requires that you be seen at least 24hours before your abortion. Making an
ultrasound to show the heartbeat of the baby + Using sonogram to show the woman so that she
can “see the error of her ways and realize what she’s about to do”.
“It is the strong conviction of Texas Right To Life that the legislature should work to stop
abortions.”
“All elective abortion is a violent act of injustice and should be rejected.”
“It is an inhuman action to a human child in the womb.”
If you’re running in Texas as a Republican, you have to claim to agree with pro-life principles.
You can be elected in Texas because of your skill at getting legislation passed to obstruct access
to abortion. (That’s how powerful this issue is in Texas, that’s how powerful pro-life advocacy
groups have become.)
Sonogram law was signed so “mothers facing that agonizing choice can actually see”.
“We want to see all unborn children protected, and we believe that what we’ve been doing is the
best way to approach it. But our roadblock has always been the Supreme Court. We’re going to
keep plugging away to overturn Roe v. Wade because we believe this country shouldn’t be
killing it’s babies.”
10. What does the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade represent to the Texas
Right to Life group?
A roadblock in their fight if they want to overturn Roe v Wade. (No other way to make abortion
illegal than overturning Roe v Wade bc it’s a Constitutional right.)
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11. How did the abortion case that changed the laws regarding abortion, get its name
(Roe v. Wade)?
The law in Texas was that abortion was illegal, but they had a woman who was already pregnant
who didn’t want to be (wanted to get an abortion), and she didn’t want her name public Jane
Roe.
And Henry Wade was the district attorney in Dallas. He was on the defendant side.
It was clear that so many women were affected by this issue. People were flying elsewhere to get
abortion, and there were thousands of women who had had illegal abortion, who had done their
own abortion. And so they filed a class action to say that this is a case for all women who are or
might become pregnant and want the option of abortion.
12. What outline does Roe v. Wade establish for abortions?
The Roe decision held that women have the right to terminate a pregnancy in the first two
trimesters, and then it’s only at the third trimester that the state has the right to prohibit abortion
except when necessary to preserve a woman’s life or health.
13. What tactics do the pro-life group use?
Operation rescue (by Catholics) : the biblical verse says “rescue those unjustly sentenced to die”.
The headquarters of Operation Rescue is actually a former abortion clinic that they closed down.
But before they closed it down, they would stand on the property line and minister to the women
that were going in this abortion clinic (they couldn’t step over the line, otherwise they’d be
arrested).
Operation Rescue attempting to close Wichita’s three abortion clinic in 1991. Thousands of pro-
life protesters were there to shame and threaten publicly woman who would go to the clinics.
Abortion battle (also against Dr. George Tiller who owns one of the three clinics).
Operation Rescue had really caused a shutdown in that city: bomb + shut down clinics.
Some women and doctors were killed or wounded by protesters in the country.
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14. What states only have ONE abortion clinic in the entire state?
North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Mississippi. (All of
those are strong republican states.)
15. Why did the pro-life community believe that they would come closer to overturning
Roe v. Wade?
If abortion is a constitutional right, the most important thing was to overturn Roe v Wade. In
order to do that, you had to change the justices on the Court. You need, as quickly as possible, a
reconstituting of the Supreme Court. They just didn’t think that the current justices would have
changed their minds.
They switched one of the men by a woman (Judge O’Connor) who was firmly opposed to
abortion. Then President Reagan appointed two new Republican Justices. And in the pro-life
community there was the hope that Roe v Wade may get overturned, and they thought the Court
was moving much closer in that direction.
(But after, Justice O’Connor surprised the world by sustaining Roe against Wade, and that was a
matter of extreme frustration to the court’s conservatives.)
16. In the landmark court decision case, Casey v. Planned Parenthood, what did the
Supreme Court decide to do?
Three Republican-appointed justices had gotten together, and they decided that rather than
overturn Roe against Wade, they were going to reformulate it with what they called the “undue
burden standard”. So the Court upheld the right to abortion. But the new standard meant that
states could undertake to persuade a woman to carry a pregnancy to term, but they cannot
prevent a woman from choosing abortion.
(Court affirms Roe v Wade but allows restrictions / 5-4 Court declines to overrule Roe)
Under Roe v Wade, most abortion restrictions were unconstitutional. In Casey, the Court
basically said that states had the latitude to restrict abortion in more ways than under Roe. “Many
kinds of restrictions, waiting periods, informed consent, things that had been found
unconstitutional under Roe have been validated by this Court. And therefore, we are much worse
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off than we have been in the past.” At the time, it was horrible, but whatever problems the
‘undue burden standard’ gave us, it was still preferable than a total outlaw of abortion.
17. What did the Presidency of President William Clinton do for Roe v. Wade?
He believes in a woman’s right to choose. There was a momentum around Clinton and support
for abortion rights.
He appointed two new justices to the Supreme Court. He nominated Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg
to the Supreme Court (pro-choice) and Judge Stephen Breyer too. So it changed the balance of
the Court (5-4).
And there were bills pending at the federal level to protect access to abortion.
18. What is “partial-birth abortion?”
This is a new idea, a term invented by abortion opponents/ pro-life (looking for a way to stop this
momentum), where they honed in on later abortion.
‘Partial-birth abortion’ took off like wildfire inside the pro-life movement. It so horrified and
shocked the conscience and stripped this veil of respectability from Planned Parenthood and the
abortionists. They had to “educate the public”, they made it an issue, they forced it on America.
Partial-birth abortion: the abortionist grabs the live baby’s legs with forceps (during late term/last
trimester).
The Republicans introduced the partial-birth abortion law, even though there’s no such thing.
They made up the word and it was a strategy that really went to challenging the question of
when late abortion would be permitted, with the idea that if you could push it earlier and earlier,
you could eliminate a number of abortions.
19. In 2003 President George W. Bush (43) signed into law the ban of partial-birth
abortion but was challenged and went to the Supreme Court, what did the court
decide?
(Two justices were replaced) In a 5-4 landmark decision, the Court’s new conservative majority
then upheld a nationwide ban on the “partial-birth abortion”. But it was split along partisan lines.
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20. Define “Filibuster”
During the debate, a senator tries to talk until the deadline (waste time/ run out the clock) to
make sure a bill is not passed. Rules: you cannot drink, eat, cannot lean on your desk, and cannot
leave the floor to go to the restroom.
21. What argument does Governor Rick Perry use once SB-5 was defeated by State
Senator Wendy Davis? Is he correct in his argument?
Perry says: “The woman who filibustered the Senate the other day, she was born into difficult
circumstances. She’s the daughter of a single woman. She was a teenage mother herself. She
managed to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and serve in the Texas Senate. It’s
unfortunate that she hasn’t learned from her own example that every life must be given a chance
to realize its full potential and that every life matters.”
Argument incorrect: She’s the best person to know what she went through, she knows best. +
Being born is not enough for the ‘full potential’.
22. Donald J. Trump had been described as a New York liberal in the past, why would
he then court the Evangelical voting block (if he himself might not believe what
they believe)?
Because in order to win in November, he needed 75, maybe even 80 percent of evangelicals
votes. (Every Republicans needs it to be elected.)
23. Where does the “balance of the Supreme Court” currently lie? Explain.
(After decades of 5-4) The balance of the Supreme Court lies today at: 6 Republican-appointed
justices vs 3 Democrat-appointed Justices.
Barret is strongly pro-life and evangelical (Trump last presidential action when RGB died).
It is a highly political and important issue. Picking good judges is how they (pro-life) will be able
to overturn Roe v Wade.