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Statement of Facts #52 from:

Reversing_Landmark_Abomination_Cases

Saving Babies from judges & voters
Saving Souls from ‘Scrupulous Neutrality’ about Religion

by proving in courts of law and in the Court of Public Opinion that:

 The right to live of a baby and of a judge are equal
 The Bible & reality-challenged religions are NOT equal

A strategy of Life that relies on the Author of Life
for pro-life, pro-Bible Lawmakers, Leaders, Lawyers, and Laymen

by Dave Leach R-IA Bible Lover-musician-grandpa (talk) 18:11, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Try to imagine how a judge, reviewing a prolife law with these Findings of Facts, would be able to dodge this evidence - in fact, see if you can find ANYONE who can refute these facts - as opposed to not caring about facts - that is, not caring about reality:

Statement of Facts #2 of 12: Courts Accept the Fact-Finding Authority of Legislatures, Juries, Experts for the same good reasons their findings persuade the public.

SCOTUS must accept legislative findings of facts that are not obviously irrational. “..the existence of facts supporting the legislative judgment is to be presumed...not to be pronounced unconstitutional unless in the light of the facts made known or generally assumed it is of such a character as to preclude the assumption that it rests upon some rational basis within the knowledge and experience of the legislators....” U.S. v. Carolene Products, 304 U.S. 144, 152 (1938). ^[1]

Besides the court-recognized fact finding authority of legislatures, courts must conform their rulings to laws until such time as courts declare laws unconstitutional. No court has overturned the “unborn victims of violence” laws (based on “human babies are people”) of 38 states and Congress, despite many challenges. ^[2]

To do so would require a court to positively affirm that human life does not begin until much later, which no legal authority has done, and for which no evidence exists.

Legislatures. Lawmakers are there by the choice of a majority of voters. They are bombarded by information from experts. They are scrutinized by other lawmakers. Many are lawyers, some of whom are constitutional scholars and past or future judges. They set the salaries of judges, and have the power to hold impeachment trials of judges. Congress, the national legislature, scrutinizes Supreme Court justices. Many Congressmen are equally qualified: 15 U.S. Senators have served on the Supreme Court, and more were nominated. ^[3]

Juries are tested for impartiality. They are educated by the most qualified expert witnesses available. They study as long as necessary to establish truth – sometimes for months. ^[4]

Expert Witnesses are the best experts money can buy, and they are scrutinized by the other side’s experts. ^[5]

It is for strong reasons that the findings of court-recognized fact finders are as respected in court as in the Court of Public Opinion. ^[6]

FOOTNOTES

↑ More about “US. v. Caroline Products”
     US. v. Caroline adds that the evidence in support of a law doesn’t have to be overwhelming: “....the constitutionality of a statute predicated upon the existence of a particular state of facts may be challenged by showing to the court that those facts have ceased to exist. ...But by their very nature such inquiries, where the legislative judgment is drawn in question, must be restricted to the issue whether any state of facts either known or which could reasonably be assumed affords support for it.” U.S. v. Carolene Products, 304 U.S. 144, 152 (1938)
     This is a fair explanation of the “rational basis” test by which courts evaluate laws that restrict non-fundamental rights. When rights are called “fundamental”, (an arbitrary classification according to Justice Thomas’ quotes later in this book), then “strict scrutiny” is the courtroom standard, by which judges are more skeptical of claims made about facts by court-recognized fact finders. Roe ruled that abortion is a “fundamental” right in 1973, but it lost that status in 1982 with Casey, and Dobbs blew away the last traces of it.
     Not that the evidence of court recognized fact finders, the power of legislative findings, and the general power of laws to shape court rulings, should be necessary to inform judges as if they were otherwise helplessly ignorant. The fact that this evidence and argument has not been before the Supreme Court does not excuse justices for ruling as if they had never heard it.
     True, it is considered unethical for judges to investigate facts on their own; they should normally limit their review of facts to those facts presented by the parties to the case, where the other side has an opportunity to respond. And no state law which has been reviewed by SCOTUS has asked for abortion to be outlawed because it murders little humans, so technically their ignorance, breathtaking as it is, can be excused.
     But even without formal presentations of this evidence, the fact that little people are still people falls under “common knowledge”, of which judges frequently, and quite ethically, “take judicial notice”.
     Besides, this kind of evidence has been presented in court – in cases which the Supreme Court chose not to hear. And even those cases which SCOTUS turned down placed legal briefs in the record which were read by at least some of the clerks of the justices.
     So the justices are not that innocent. Their ignorance is willful.
     Still, prolifers share some of the blame for tiptoeing around Casey so long. Casey told states that no abortion restriction could be “constitutional” that had, for any part of its purpose, the reduction of abortion. Casey barred any restriction that “has the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.” Planned Parenthood v. CASEY, 505 U.S. 833, 877 (1992)
     Thus, while lawmakers told prolife voters their laws were designed to reduce abortion as much as courts would let them, their argument in court avoided any suggestion that babies of people are people, in order to cover up their crime of caring.
     Thus states deliberately kept evidence out of court that babies of people are people, for most of abortion’s half century. And again, judges think it is unethical to rule according to evidence submitted by neither party to a case. (They way they ruled in Roe.)
     Yet even today, after Casey is overturned and states are specifically invited by SCOTUS to outlaw abortion is much as voters will permit, I still read courtroom defenses that don’t mention the reason for outlawing abortion: that babies are people, which makes abortion murder. Why? Is it just 30 years of Casey-inspired habit?
↑ More about “ 'Unborn victims of violence laws of 38 states...[have survived] many challenges"
     Wikipedia tells us that not only have these laws been challenged many times in court and have always survived, (challenges “...have been uniformly rejected by both the federal and the state courts”), but also that abortionists and Democrats don’t quite understand how legal abortion has been able to survive the passage of these laws! They can hardly believe their good fortune, that even though these laws establish the unborn as “14th Amendment ‘persons’”, prolifers have still not cited them in court in support of outlawing abortion. Here is the Wikipedia excerpt:
     The Unborn Victims of Violence Act was strongly opposed by most abortion-rights organizations, on grounds that the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision said that the human fetus is not a "person" under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and that if the fetus were a Fourteenth Amendment "person", then they would have a constitutional right to life.1 The laws of 38 states also recognize the human fetus as the legal victim of homicide and often, other violent crimes during the entire period of prenatal development (27 states) or during part of the prenatal period (nine states).2 Legal challenges to these laws, arguing that they violate Roe v. Wade or other Supreme Court precedents, have been uniformly rejected by both the federal and the state courts, including the supreme courts of California, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota.3
     Senator John Kerry, who was a main opponent of President George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election, voted against the bill, saying, "I have serious concerns about this legislation because the law cannot simultaneously provide that a fetus is a human being and protect the right of the mother to choose to terminate her pregnancy."4
     Some prominent legal scholars who strongly support Roe v. Wade, such as Walter Dellinger of Duke University Law School, Richard Parker of Harvard, and Sherry F. Colb of Rutgers Law School, have written that fetal homicide laws do not conflict with Roe v. Wade.5
     A principle that allows language in law to not conflict with Roe, which logically should trigger Roe's "collapse" clause, was explained in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 492 US 490 (1989). Until such language becomes the basis for laws that specify penalties for abortion, the issue is not even before the court, of whether or not such language conflicts with Roe, and if so, which should be struck down.6
     Representative Jerrold Nadler made a statement in voicing his opposition to a proposed federal law giving prenatal entities certain legal rights. The bill appears to contradict an important premise behind the constitutional right to seek an abortion: prenatal entities are not persons.7 [1]
     Footnotes to this Wikipedia excerpt:
     1 Roe v. Wade's collapse clause says: “The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a 'person' within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument. On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
     2 State Homicide Laws that recognize unborn victims: http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/fetal-homicide-state-laws.aspx
     3 Constitutional Challenges to State Unborn Victims (Fetal Homicide) Laws. http://www.nrlc.org/Unborn_Victims/statechallenges.html
     4 Fisher, Brian E. (2014). Abortion: The Ultimate Exploitation of Women. New York, NY: Morgan James Publishing. pp. 16. ISBN 9781614488415. https://archive.org/details/abortionultimate0000fish
     5 “The Unborn Victims of Violence Act and Roe v. Wade – Read what these supporters of legal abortion say about ‘fetal homicide’ laws” (PDF). National Right to Life Committee. 2004-02-02. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-04-20. Retrieved 2019-10-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20130420160514/http://www.nrlc.org/Unborn_Victims/RoeSupportersSpeakUVVA.pdf
     6 “...until those courts have applied the...state's view of when life begins...to restrict appellees' [abortionists'] activities in some concrete way, it is inappropriate for federal courts to address its meaning.” Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 492 US 490 (1989). Sandra Day O'Connor added in a concurrence, “When the constitutional invalidity of a State's abortion statute actually turns upon the constitutional validity of Roe, there will be time enough to reexamine Roe, and to do so carefully.”
     7 Alongi, April (2008-09-01). “The Unborn Victims of Violence Act and its Impact on Reproductive Rights”. Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice. 15 (1): 285 – via Scholarly Commons. https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol15/iss1/11
     Roe is officially overturned anyway, of course. But it may be worth establishing that there is nothing in its rubble, or anywhere else, that could support any undermining of the fact-finding authority of “unborn victims of violence” laws to establish anything less than the full humanty/personhood of the unborn. If you still wonder if the way Roe minimized this evidence makes sense, the remainder of this Note is for you.
     Roe said such laws don’t prove lawmakers actually think babies are people: they probably just treat the baby’s death as a loss the way you would treat the loss of a dirt bike. Or of a puppy:
“...some States permit the parents of a stillborn child to maintain an action for wrongful death because of prenatal injuries.65 Such an action, however, would appear to be one to vindicate the parents’ interest and is thus consistent with the view that the fetus, at most, represents only the potentiality of life. ...In short, the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.” Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 162 (1973)

     An example of such a lawsuit occurred just three months before the Roe ruling. A car was hit by a Greyhound bus, killing a mother and her 8-1/2 month unborn child. www.masscases.com/cases/sjc/368/368mass354.html. The administrator of their estate sued Greyhound for “wrongful death” of a human being.
     Roe’s dismissal of evidence like that doesn’t work for today’s “unborn victims of violence” laws for two reasons:
     (1) 28 of the 38 states explicitly state that the premise of their law is the humanity/personhood of the unborn – while saying nothing about the interests of the parents, and
     (2) Roe was talking about parents bringing civil lawsuits against people whose negligence had caused the deaths of their unborn children, in which case the parents’ interest was indeed a factor. But unborn victims of violence laws are different: they are criminal charges, brought by county or state prosecutors, to vindicate the states’ interest in protecting life, without asking the parents for permission. And the penalties for killing an unborn baby are the same in 38 states as the penalties for killing the mother. This is not like the parents’ interest in the loss of some inanimate object, like a refrigerator. Or a dog.
↑ More about “ 15 U.S. Senators served on the U.S. Supreme Court” https://www.senate.gov/senators/ Supreme_Court.htm
     Congress approves Supreme Court justices. Not only does the Constitution give Congress that power, but Congress is well qualified: it contains many lawyers, many of whom qualify as constitutional scholars. At least that is what presidents have often thought, since 15 U.S. Senators served on the U.S. Supreme Court, not counting those nominated but not approved by the Senate. An example of a qualified Senator today is Ted Cruz, Republican from Texas, who as Texas Attorney General successfully argued several cases before the Supreme Court. Cruz is on a “short list” of Supreme Court candidates published July 22, 2023 by presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. www.marketwatch.com/story/republican-presidential-hopeful-ramaswamy-puts-ted-cruz-and-mike-lee-on-his-supreme-court-list-69655939
     Lawmakers are also elected from the same populations that supply jurors.
     So now that Congress and 38 states rule that all unborn babies are fully human from fertilization, their ruling on that fact carries at least as much legal weight as what the Supreme Court has ruled. Especially since the Supreme Court declines to rule:
     "(22 State Policy Organizations amicus brief filed in Dobbs:) The positivistic [materialistic – the belief that only physical things are real] reduction of persons represented by the Court’s abortion decisions has leavened the law in a way that curtails historic State policies grounded in deference to a given human nature and the common law rights that correspond to that nature.
     "By purporting to leave the question of the meaning of persons in the Fourteenth Amendment unanswered, this Court’s holdings requiring States to abandon common and natural law commitments have effectively ratified a diminished view of the human person in law. These holdings have foisted upon the States a denatured anthropological model that prohibits them from ascribing objective meaning, dignity, and value to vulnerable persons.
     "The severe distortion of the human person in constitutional caselaw invites systemic effects well beyond the troubled context of abortion. If constitutional precept commands States to treat nascent human life as vacant of meaning and value apart from subjective individual determination or Court authorization, concurrently placed in doubt is the historic understanding of law as constrained by a reality prior to and beyond its coercive impositions.
     A national abortion-enablement policy is mournful in itself, but does not keep to itself. It corrodes the law altogether. [www.supremecourt. gov/DocketPDF/19/19-1392/185004/20210727112957999_Dobbs Amici brief_FPC_ 7.23.21.pdf]
     The pretense that judges can’t tell if babies of humans are humans, maintained by Roe and retained by Dobbs, is a sophistry no longer believable if it ever was. When judges profess greater ignorance than that of children, they should not claim to know better than state legislatures.
     Nathan Schlueter said nearly the same thing in a way that sounds more scholarly: “We cannot afford to feign skepticism about the personhood of unborn children any more than an earlier age could afford to feign skepticism about the personhood of African-Americans.”
     What makes that sophistry as legally absurd as it is spiritually blasphemous is that it plays games with reality. Blacks are people with souls equally loved by God with all other souls; so are babies. To imagine otherwise is as specious as telling the property tax collector that your house is actually a tent. A house is not a tent, and a person is not 3/5 of a person; nor is a person only “potential life”. Nor can either slavery or murder be left for voters to decide whether to keep legal.
     Connie Weiskopf and Kristine L. Brown, in their amicus in Dobbs, wrote:
     "The sophistry at the heart of Roe is that the beginning of human life was ever a subject for speculation ...There was no doubt at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment as to whether the common definition of “person” included preborn persons. One-hundred and fifty years since, medical science has overwhelmingly confirmed this commonly understood inclusion of preborn persons in legal personhood. ...no other so-called constitutional right involves the “the purposeful termination of a potential life.”
     Yet even in Harris, we see the poison of Roe in the qualifier “potential.” ...By choosing Levy v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 68 (1968) as the test for legal personhood, this Court can reach a new milestone in the advancement of human rights. ...The Court started from the premise that “illegitimate children are not ‘nonpersons,’” insofar as they are “humans, live, and have their being.” Levy 391 U.S. at 70 (emphasis added). Thus all children who 1)are human, 2) are living, and 3) are in being, are “clearly” persons under the Equal Protection Clause." [www.supremecourt. gov/DocketPDF/19/19-1392/185063/20210727174713396_FINAL_Brown_ Weiskopf_Dobbs_Amicus.pdf]
     “Trust” and “Congress” aren’t a perfect fit, but compared to public trust in other human authorities it ranks high, while trust in juries and in experts ranks higher. There is more public scrutiny of the trustworthiness of political authorities more than that of authorities on other subjects because what political authorities rule affects more of us more.
     But the willingness of most of society to live by most of the rules imposed by our government is an important measure of society’s trust in its authorities to create rules which mostly conform to reality. Which in turn is an important measure of society’s trust in the expertise of its authorities to grasp reality to a reasonable level.
↑ More about "Juries (Become Authorities)"
     The reason juries can “establish” these truths with the kind of authority that is as acceptable to whole societies as other human authorities is that unlike public opinion surveys or petitions, which are normally not admissible evidence of facts in court because popular uninformed opinion is a less stable reservoir of justice, we test jurors for impartiality and educate them with the most qualified expert witnesses we can find.
     And the education of jurors does not end with a 500 word article. It continues until both sides run out of evidence. Which can take all day, all week, or even all year. Juries contribute impartiality, and commitment to study as long as necessary, to our search for Truth.
     Juries are also less likely to be swayed by scholarly sounding gaslighting. Where there is gaslighting, the opposing attorney is likely to alert jurors to it. And if a legal theory seems seems irrefutable but makes no sense, or seems fundamentally unfair, juries are not bound by law to endorse it.
     Juries are sometimes bolder than judges and lawyers to follow the obvious when a judge’s application of the law doesn’t fit the facts or a precedent has an erroneous factual premise.
     Unfortunately when states defend their abortion restrictions in court, they have not, so far, cited the consensus of juries in those few early abortion prevention trials in which judges allowed juries to hear the Necessity Defense (the defendants’ action was necessary in order to save lives) and juries acquitted because the defendants were saving lives. This is a powerful resource which prolifers need to use. In both kinds of courts - of Law, and of Public Opinion.
↑ More about “Expert Witnesses are scrutinized by the other side’s experts”
     That is a standard that news reporters make a show of meeting, but reporters will (1) talk to a source for an hour and select maybe two sentences for a quote, (2) take the quote as far out of context as necessary to suit the prejudices of the reporter, (3) get the quote wrong, (4) make no public record available of all that was said so readers can double check the accuracy of the report, and (5) cram all that into 300-1,000 words.
     News reporters are kind of low on the trust scale, especially after revelations of their cooperation with government censors over recent years, yet are high enough that millions still turn to them to understand the world around them. Expert witnesses rank higher, because they are held to higher standards. Their usual audiences are other experts who can’t be easily fooled
     In abortion prevention trials, (where people were prosecuted for trying to save lives by preventing abortion, usually by blocking doors so mothers couldn’t enter to murder their babies), expert witnesses testified that fully human life begins from the first minute, and were never refuted.
     But confusing themselves for news reporters, judges censored the expert witnesses, not allowing the juries to hear them, but only letting them testify after sending the jury to another room. Technically, however, they created a public record; a Court Reporter took notes and will convert it into a readable transcript – for several hundred dollars if the testimony isn’t long.
     The fact that expert witnesses in abortion prevention trials were never refuted is breathtaking considering that abortionists invest billions in legally attacking prolifers, demonstrating their extremely high motivation to refute prolifers in court to the fullest extent possible. In normal trials, if a litigant argues that the opposing evidence is irrelevant, he will also bring in contrary evidence to show the opposing evidence is also wrong, in case the judge doesn’t agree that it is irrelevant. But in abortion prevention trials the fact that human babies are people was dismissed as irrelevant, while the accuracy of the fact was for all practical purposes conceded, being left unchallenged. Indeed, who could refute it?
     Judges. Individual judges who have taken a position, are another category of court-recognized fact finders who agree babies are people.
     One reason judges probably have more credibility than news reporters is they at least write a summary of the proceedings, reporting the positions of both sides, in way more detail than news reports. Roe was 65 pages. And anyone can get copies of the legal briefs filed, and if they are rich enough, a transcript of the proceedings. At least records exist, unlike news reporter interviews. (As opposed to talk show guests.)
     In the past judges’ rulings were available to anyone by going to a law library, while the briefs of the parties, and the amicus briefs, were unavailable to the public. That gave judges’ version of cases the only version the public saw. Before computers, there was only one paper copy of each record, in lower courts. The public was allowed to inspect them there in the recorder’s office, but not to remove them. Although prosecutors could take them out of the office. One prosecutor actually admitted in court that he destroyed records in my friend’s file to deny him the opportunity to seek relief. He was not punished.
     Rulings are much easier today to find online, but now SCOTUS makes the entire docket (record) available online, and lower courts are moving in that direction.
     Today the Polk County Courthouse has docket filings on its computers, which the public can view, and can print off for a charge.
     When the Sixth Amendment “right to counsel” was added to our Constitution, hiring on as a human copying machine for a lawyer was one of the ways people studied law to become lawyers.
     Am I rambling?
↑ More about “court-recognized fact finders are...respected in...the Court of Public Opinion.”
     Juries, 2023, August 28: “Nearly 60% of Americans say they have at least a fair amount of trust in juries, according to a new survey — higher than for any other group in the judicial system. But that trust may soon be put to the test, as former President Donald Trump appears to be headed for multiple trials in the coming year. When asked specifically about Trump’s upcoming trials, a majority of Americans — Democrats, Republicans and independents — said they did not think the courts would be able to seat impartial jurors.” - New York Times, Americans still trust juries
     News reporters, 2021, October 8: “36 percent of survey respondents say they trust the press to report the news fully, fairly, and accurately (down from 40 percent who said the same last year)....29 percent have ‘not very much’ trust in media and 34 percent ‘none at all.’ ” Gallup poll, reported in Reason, Trust in media...near record lows
     Judges, 2022, September 29: “Trust in the judicial branch of the federal government has fallen by 20% since 2021.... The poll showed that only 47 % of respondents expressed ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ of trust in the judicial branch....(Trust among) Democrats...fell from 50% in 2021 to 25% in 2022, while independents’ trust fell by 5% to 46%. Republicans, by contrast, saw their confidence in the judiciary rise to 67%....In 2000, during the Bush v. Gore case about that year’s presidential election, trust in the judiciary was at 75%, a full 28% higher than it is currently.”
     As for the Supreme Court, “58% disapproved of their performance, a record high, while 40% approved, a record low.” Republican confidence in SCOTUS got a boost from Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. “Additionally, the judiciary has reversed several policy initiatives by the Biden administration. These include the federal mandate to wear masks on transportation (Health Freedom Defense Fund v. Biden) and the federal vaccine mandate on private businesses (NFIB v. OSHA). - Gallup.com, Trust in judicial branch sinks to new low
     State Legislatures & Governors, 2018, September: The first percentage is the trust level among whites; the second is that among blacks: state legislature, 47/40%; governor, 48/39%; state courts, 57/42%; local police, 70/39%; SCOTUS, 56/44%; Congress, 22/31%; President, 40/2%! - Black Trust in U.S. Legislatures, by Earnest Dupree III and John R. Hibbing, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Online Library

[1] More about “US. v. Caroline Products”
US. v. Caroline adds that the evidence in support of a law doesn’t have to be overwhelming: “....the constitutionality of a statute predicated upon the existence of a particular state of facts may be challenged by showing to the court that those facts have ceased to exist. ...But by their very nature such inquiries, where the legislative judgment is drawn in question, must be restricted to the issue whether any state of facts either known or which could reasonably be assumed affords support for it.” U.S. v. Carolene Products, 304 U.S. 144, 152 (1938)
This is a fair explanation of the “rational basis” test by which courts evaluate laws that restrict non-fundamental rights. When rights are called “fundamental”, (an arbitrary classification according to Justice Thomas’ quotes later in this book), then “strict scrutiny” is the courtroom standard, by which judges are more skeptical of claims made about facts by court-recognized fact finders. Roe ruled that abortion is a “fundamental” right in 1973, but it lost that status in 1982 with Casey, and Dobbs blew away the last traces of it.
Not that the evidence of court recognized fact finders, the power of legislative findings, and the general power of laws to shape court rulings, should be necessary to inform judges as if they were otherwise helplessly ignorant. The fact that this evidence and argument has not been before the Supreme Court does not excuse justices for ruling as if they had never heard it.
True, it is considered unethical for judges to investigate facts on their own; they should normally limit their review of facts to those facts presented by the parties to the case, where the other side has an opportunity to respond. And no state law which has been reviewed by SCOTUS has asked for abortion to be outlawed because it murders little humans, so technically their ignorance, breathtaking as it is, can be excused.
But even without formal presentations of this evidence, the fact that little people are still people falls under “common knowledge”, of which judges frequently, and quite ethically, “take judicial notice”.
Besides, this kind of evidence has been presented in court – in cases which the Supreme Court chose not to hear. And even those cases which SCOTUS turned down placed legal briefs in the record which were read by at least some of the clerks of the justices.
So the justices are not that innocent. Their ignorance is willful.
Still, prolifers share some of the blame for tiptoeing around Casey so long. Casey told states that no abortion restriction could be “constitutional” that had, for any part of its purpose, the reduction of abortion. Casey barred any restriction that “has the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.” Planned Parenthood v. CASEY, 505 U.S. 833, 877 (1992)
Thus, while lawmakers told prolife voters their laws were designed to reduce abortion as much as courts would let them, their argument in court avoided any suggestion that babies of people are people, in order to cover up their crime of caring.
Thus states deliberately kept evidence out of court that babies of people are people, for most of abortion’s half century. And again, judges think it is unethical to rule according to evidence submitted by neither party to a case. (They way they ruled in Roe.)
Yet even today, after Casey is overturned and states are specifically invited by SCOTUS to outlaw abortion is much as voters will permit, I still read courtroom defenses that don’t mention the reason for outlawing abortion: that babies are people, which makes abortion murder. Why? Is it just 30 years of Casey-inspired habit?

[2] More about “ 'Unborn victims of violence laws of 38 states...[have survived] many challenges"
Wikipedia tells us that not only have these laws been challenged many times in court and have always survived, (challenges “...have been uniformly rejected by both the federal and the state courts”), but also that abortionists and Democrats don’t quite understand how legal abortion has been able to survive the passage of these laws! They can hardly believe their good fortune, that even though these laws establish the unborn as “14th Amendment ‘persons’”, prolifers have still not cited them in court in support of outlawing abortion. Here is the Wikipedia excerpt:
The Unborn Victims of Violence Act was strongly opposed by most abortion-rights organizations, on grounds that the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision said that the human fetus is not a "person" under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and that if the fetus were a Fourteenth Amendment "person", then they would have a constitutional right to life.1 The laws of 38 states also recognize the human fetus as the legal victim of homicide and often, other violent crimes during the entire period of prenatal development (27 states) or during part of the prenatal period (nine states).2 Legal challenges to these laws, arguing that they violate Roe v. Wade or other Supreme Court precedents, have been uniformly rejected by both the federal and the state courts, including the supreme courts of California, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota.3
Senator John Kerry, who was a main opponent of President George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election, voted against the bill, saying, "I have serious concerns about this legislation because the law cannot simultaneously provide that a fetus is a human being and protect the right of the mother to choose to terminate her pregnancy."4
Some prominent legal scholars who strongly support Roe v. Wade, such as Walter Dellinger of Duke University Law School, Richard Parker of Harvard, and Sherry F. Colb of Rutgers Law School, have written that fetal homicide laws do not conflict with Roe v. Wade.5
A principle that allows language in law to not conflict with Roe, which logically should trigger Roe's "collapse" clause, was explained in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 492 US 490 (1989). Until such language becomes the basis for laws that specify penalties for abortion, the issue is not even before the court, of whether or not such language conflicts with Roe, and if so, which should be struck down.6
Representative Jerrold Nadler made a statement in voicing his opposition to a proposed federal law giving prenatal entities certain legal rights. The bill appears to contradict an important premise behind the constitutional right to seek an abortion: prenatal entities are not persons.7 [1]
Footnotes to this Wikipedia excerpt:
1 Roe v. Wade's collapse clause says: “The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a 'person' within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument. On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
2 State Homicide Laws that recognize unborn victims: http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/fetal-homicide-state-laws.aspx
3 Constitutional Challenges to State Unborn Victims (Fetal Homicide) Laws. http://www.nrlc.org/Unborn_Victims/statechallenges.html
4 Fisher, Brian E. (2014). Abortion: The Ultimate Exploitation of Women. New York, NY: Morgan James Publishing. pp. 16. ISBN 9781614488415. https://archive.org/details/abortionultimate0000fish
5 “The Unborn Victims of Violence Act and Roe v. Wade – Read what these supporters of legal abortion say about ‘fetal homicide’ laws” (PDF). National Right to Life Committee. 2004-02-02. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-04-20. Retrieved 2019-10-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20130420160514/http://www.nrlc.org/Unborn_Victims/RoeSupportersSpeakUVVA.pdf
6 “...until those courts have applied the...state's view of when life begins...to restrict appellees' [abortionists'] activities in some concrete way, it is inappropriate for federal courts to address its meaning.” Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 492 US 490 (1989). Sandra Day O'Connor added in a concurrence, “When the constitutional invalidity of a State's abortion statute actually turns upon the constitutional validity of Roe, there will be time enough to reexamine Roe, and to do so carefully.”
7 Alongi, April (2008-09-01). “The Unborn Victims of Violence Act and its Impact on Reproductive Rights”. Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice. 15 (1): 285 – via Scholarly Commons. https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol15/iss1/11
Roe is officially overturned anyway, of course. But it may be worth establishing that there is nothing in its rubble, or anywhere else, that could support any undermining of the fact-finding authority of “unborn victims of violence” laws to establish anything less than the full humanty/personhood of the unborn. If you still wonder if the way Roe minimized this evidence makes sense, the remainder of this Note is for you.
Roe said such laws don’t prove lawmakers actually think babies are people: they probably just treat the baby’s death as a loss the way you would treat the loss of a dirt bike. Or of a puppy:
“...some States permit the parents of a stillborn child to maintain an action for wrongful death because of prenatal injuries.65 Such an action, however, would appear to be one to vindicate the parents’ interest and is thus consistent with the view that the fetus, at most, represents only the potentiality of life. ...In short, the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.” Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 162 (1973)

An example of such a lawsuit occurred just three months before the Roe ruling. A car was hit by a Greyhound bus, killing a mother and her 8-1/2 month unborn child. www.masscases.com/cases/sjc/368/368mass354.html. The administrator of their estate sued Greyhound for “wrongful death” of a human being.
Roe’s dismissal of evidence like that doesn’t work for today’s “unborn victims of violence” laws for two reasons:
(1) 28 of the 38 states explicitly state that the premise of their law is the humanity/personhood of the unborn – while saying nothing about the interests of the parents, and
(2) Roe was talking about parents bringing civil lawsuits against people whose negligence had caused the deaths of their unborn children, in which case the parents’ interest was indeed a factor. But unborn victims of violence laws are different: they are criminal charges, brought by county or state prosecutors, to vindicate the states’ interest in protecting life, without asking the parents for permission. And the penalties for killing an unborn baby are the same in 38 states as the penalties for killing the mother. This is not like the parents’ interest in the loss of some inanimate object, like a refrigerator. Or a dog.

[3] More about “ 15 U.S. Senators served on the U.S. Supreme Court” https://www.senate.gov/senators/ Supreme_Court.htm
Congress approves Supreme Court justices. Not only does the Constitution give Congress that power, but Congress is well qualified: it contains many lawyers, many of whom qualify as constitutional scholars. At least that is what presidents have often thought, since 15 U.S. Senators served on the U.S. Supreme Court, not counting those nominated but not approved by the Senate. An example of a qualified Senator today is Ted Cruz, Republican from Texas, who as Texas Attorney General successfully argued several cases before the Supreme Court. Cruz is on a “short list” of Supreme Court candidates published July 22, 2023 by presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. www.marketwatch.com/story/republican-presidential-hopeful-ramaswamy-puts-ted-cruz-and-mike-lee-on-his-supreme-court-list-69655939
Lawmakers are also elected from the same populations that supply jurors.
So now that Congress and 38 states rule that all unborn babies are fully human from fertilization, their ruling on that fact carries at least as much legal weight as what the Supreme Court has ruled. Especially since the Supreme Court declines to rule:
"(22 State Policy Organizations amicus brief filed in Dobbs:) The positivistic [materialistic – the belief that only physical things are real] reduction of persons represented by the Court’s abortion decisions has leavened the law in a way that curtails historic State policies grounded in deference to a given human nature and the common law rights that correspond to that nature.
"By purporting to leave the question of the meaning of persons in the Fourteenth Amendment unanswered, this Court’s holdings requiring States to abandon common and natural law commitments have effectively ratified a diminished view of the human person in law. These holdings have foisted upon the States a denatured anthropological model that prohibits them from ascribing objective meaning, dignity, and value to vulnerable persons.
"The severe distortion of the human person in constitutional caselaw invites systemic effects well beyond the troubled context of abortion. If constitutional precept commands States to treat nascent human life as vacant of meaning and value apart from subjective individual determination or Court authorization, concurrently placed in doubt is the historic understanding of law as constrained by a reality prior to and beyond its coercive impositions.
A national abortion-enablement policy is mournful in itself, but does not keep to itself. It corrodes the law altogether. [www.supremecourt. gov/DocketPDF/19/19-1392/185004/20210727112957999_Dobbs Amici brief_FPC_ 7.23.21.pdf]
The pretense that judges can’t tell if babies of humans are humans, maintained by Roe and retained by Dobbs, is a sophistry no longer believable if it ever was. When judges profess greater ignorance than that of children, they should not claim to know better than state legislatures.
Nathan Schlueter said nearly the same thing in a way that sounds more scholarly: “We cannot afford to feign skepticism about the personhood of unborn children any more than an earlier age could afford to feign skepticism about the personhood of African-Americans.”
What makes that sophistry as legally absurd as it is spiritually blasphemous is that it plays games with reality. Blacks are people with souls equally loved by God with all other souls; so are babies. To imagine otherwise is as specious as telling the property tax collector that your house is actually a tent. A house is not a tent, and a person is not 3/5 of a person; nor is a person only “potential life”. Nor can either slavery or murder be left for voters to decide whether to keep legal.
Connie Weiskopf and Kristine L. Brown, in their amicus in Dobbs, wrote:
"The sophistry at the heart of Roe is that the beginning of human life was ever a subject for speculation ...There was no doubt at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment as to whether the common definition of “person” included preborn persons. One-hundred and fifty years since, medical science has overwhelmingly confirmed this commonly understood inclusion of preborn persons in legal personhood. ...no other so-called constitutional right involves the “the purposeful termination of a potential life.”
Yet even in Harris, we see the poison of Roe in the qualifier “potential.” ...By choosing Levy v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 68 (1968) as the test for legal personhood, this Court can reach a new milestone in the advancement of human rights. ...The Court started from the premise that “illegitimate children are not ‘nonpersons,’” insofar as they are “humans, live, and have their being.” Levy 391 U.S. at 70 (emphasis added). Thus all children who 1)are human, 2) are living, and 3) are in being, are “clearly” persons under the Equal Protection Clause." [www.supremecourt. gov/DocketPDF/19/19-1392/185063/20210727174713396_FINAL_Brown_ Weiskopf_Dobbs_Amicus.pdf]
“Trust” and “Congress” aren’t a perfect fit, but compared to public trust in other human authorities it ranks high, while trust in juries and in experts ranks higher. There is more public scrutiny of the trustworthiness of political authorities more than that of authorities on other subjects because what political authorities rule affects more of us more.
But the willingness of most of society to live by most of the rules imposed by our government is an important measure of society’s trust in its authorities to create rules which mostly conform to reality. Which in turn is an important measure of society’s trust in the expertise of its authorities to grasp reality to a reasonable level.

[4] More about "Juries (Become Authorities)"
The reason juries can “establish” these truths with the kind of authority that is as acceptable to whole societies as other human authorities is that unlike public opinion surveys or petitions, which are normally not admissible evidence of facts in court because popular uninformed opinion is a less stable reservoir of justice, we test jurors for impartiality and educate them with the most qualified expert witnesses we can find.
And the education of jurors does not end with a 500 word article. It continues until both sides run out of evidence. Which can take all day, all week, or even all year. Juries contribute impartiality, and commitment to study as long as necessary, to our search for Truth.
Juries are also less likely to be swayed by scholarly sounding gaslighting. Where there is gaslighting, the opposing attorney is likely to alert jurors to it. And if a legal theory seems seems irrefutable but makes no sense, or seems fundamentally unfair, juries are not bound by law to endorse it.
Juries are sometimes bolder than judges and lawyers to follow the obvious when a judge’s application of the law doesn’t fit the facts or a precedent has an erroneous factual premise.
Unfortunately when states defend their abortion restrictions in court, they have not, so far, cited the consensus of juries in those few early abortion prevention trials in which judges allowed juries to hear the Necessity Defense (the defendants’ action was necessary in order to save lives) and juries acquitted because the defendants were saving lives. This is a powerful resource which prolifers need to use. In both kinds of courts - of Law, and of Public Opinion.

[5] More about “Expert Witnesses are scrutinized by the other side’s experts”
That is a standard that news reporters make a show of meeting, but reporters will (1) talk to a source for an hour and select maybe two sentences for a quote, (2) take the quote as far out of context as necessary to suit the prejudices of the reporter, (3) get the quote wrong, (4) make no public record available of all that was said so readers can double check the accuracy of the report, and (5) cram all that into 300-1,000 words.
News reporters are kind of low on the trust scale, especially after revelations of their cooperation with government censors over recent years, yet are high enough that millions still turn to them to understand the world around them. Expert witnesses rank higher, because they are held to higher standards. Their usual audiences are other experts who can’t be easily fooled
In abortion prevention trials, (where people were prosecuted for trying to save lives by preventing abortion, usually by blocking doors so mothers couldn’t enter to murder their babies), expert witnesses testified that fully human life begins from the first minute, and were never refuted.
But confusing themselves for news reporters, judges censored the expert witnesses, not allowing the juries to hear them, but only letting them testify after sending the jury to another room. Technically, however, they created a public record; a Court Reporter took notes and will convert it into a readable transcript – for several hundred dollars if the testimony isn’t long.
The fact that expert witnesses in abortion prevention trials were never refuted is breathtaking considering that abortionists invest billions in legally attacking prolifers, demonstrating their extremely high motivation to refute prolifers in court to the fullest extent possible. In normal trials, if a litigant argues that the opposing evidence is irrelevant, he will also bring in contrary evidence to show the opposing evidence is also wrong, in case the judge doesn’t agree that it is irrelevant. But in abortion prevention trials the fact that human babies are people was dismissed as irrelevant, while the accuracy of the fact was for all practical purposes conceded, being left unchallenged. Indeed, who could refute it?
Judges. Individual judges who have taken a position, are another category of court-recognized fact finders who agree babies are people.
One reason judges probably have more credibility than news reporters is they at least write a summary of the proceedings, reporting the positions of both sides, in way more detail than news reports. Roe was 65 pages. And anyone can get copies of the legal briefs filed, and if they are rich enough, a transcript of the proceedings. At least records exist, unlike news reporter interviews. (As opposed to talk show guests.)
In the past judges’ rulings were available to anyone by going to a law library, while the briefs of the parties, and the amicus briefs, were unavailable to the public. That gave judges’ version of cases the only version the public saw. Before computers, there was only one paper copy of each record, in lower courts. The public was allowed to inspect them there in the recorder’s office, but not to remove them. Although prosecutors could take them out of the office. One prosecutor actually admitted in court that he destroyed records in my friend’s file to deny him the opportunity to seek relief. He was not punished.
Rulings are much easier today to find online, but now SCOTUS makes the entire docket (record) available online, and lower courts are moving in that direction.
Today the Polk County Courthouse has docket filings on its computers, which the public can view, and can print off for a charge.
When the Sixth Amendment “right to counsel” was added to our Constitution, hiring on as a human copying machine for a lawyer was one of the ways people studied law to become lawyers.
Am I rambling?

[6] More about “court-recognized fact finders are...respected in...the Court of Public Opinion.”
Juries, 2023, August 28: “Nearly 60% of Americans say they have at least a fair amount of trust in juries, according to a new survey — higher than for any other group in the judicial system. But that trust may soon be put to the test, as former President Donald Trump appears to be headed for multiple trials in the coming year. When asked specifically about Trump’s upcoming trials, a majority of Americans — Democrats, Republicans and independents — said they did not think the courts would be able to seat impartial jurors.” - New York Times, Americans still trust juries
News reporters, 2021, October 8: “36 percent of survey respondents say they trust the press to report the news fully, fairly, and accurately (down from 40 percent who said the same last year)....29 percent have ‘not very much’ trust in media and 34 percent ‘none at all.’ ” Gallup poll, reported in Reason, Trust in media...near record lows
Judges, 2022, September 29: “Trust in the judicial branch of the federal government has fallen by 20% since 2021.... The poll showed that only 47 % of respondents expressed ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ of trust in the judicial branch....(Trust among) Democrats...fell from 50% in 2021 to 25% in 2022, while independents’ trust fell by 5% to 46%. Republicans, by contrast, saw their confidence in the judiciary rise to 67%....In 2000, during the Bush v. Gore case about that year’s presidential election, trust in the judiciary was at 75%, a full 28% higher than it is currently.”
As for the Supreme Court, “58% disapproved of their performance, a record high, while 40% approved, a record low.” Republican confidence in SCOTUS got a boost from Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. “Additionally, the judiciary has reversed several policy initiatives by the Biden administration. These include the federal mandate to wear masks on transportation (Health Freedom Defense Fund v. Biden) and the federal vaccine mandate on private businesses (NFIB v. OSHA). - Gallup.com, Trust in judicial branch sinks to new low
State Legislatures & Governors, 2018, September: The first percentage is the trust level among whites; the second is that among blacks: state legislature, 47/40%; governor, 48/39%; state courts, 57/42%; local police, 70/39%; SCOTUS, 56/44%; Congress, 22/31%; President, 40/2%! - Black Trust in U.S. Legislatures, by Earnest Dupree III and John R. Hibbing, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Online Library

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Statement 2 + Footnotes

Reversing_Landmark_Abomination_Cases

Statement of Facts #2 of 12: Courts Accept the Fact-Finding Authority of Legislatures, Juries, Experts for the same good reasons their findings persuade the public.

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