Joe Biden, who for decades postured as a moderate on abortion, has shown his true extremism in nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.
Jackson’s record on abortion is well documented and disturbing. Having won a ringing endorsement from the kingpin of the U.S. abortion cartel, Planned Parenthood, Jackson has made no secret of her support for the killing of the unborn.
In fact, she has prioritized defending and expanding abortion throughout her career. Jackson filed an amicus brief calling for the First Amendment rights of peaceful pro-life sidewalk advocates to be revoked. She worked with the pro-abortion American Constitution Society.
But what is most disturbing in Jackson’s record of abortion extremism is her advocacy for partial birth abortion. During her clerkship for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, whom she would replace on the court if confirmed, Jackson worked on the 2000 case, Stenberg v. Carhart. Breyer’s opinion struck down a Nebraska law banning partial birth abortion, in which “a fetus is partly extracted from the birth canal, feet first, and the brain is then suctioned out.”
Contrary to claims by the abortion industry that partial birth abortion is only carried out to remove children who are already deceased, abortionist Martin Haskell told the media that the vast majority of children aborted in this manner are alive and healthy when they are pulled out of the womb and stabbed in the head. And partial birth abortion was not uncommon back when it was legal. Worse, there is evidence that it is still being committed, as described by abortionists such as Planned Parenthood medical director Deborah Nucatola.
In typical gaslighting style, abortion supporters frequently claim that there is “no such thing” as partial birth abortion even as they vigorously insist that it be kept legal. But they don’t claim that abortionists do not kill babies in the manner of partial birth abortion. Rather, they insist the procedure must be called dilation and extraction (or D&X) and that referring to it by the clear and accurate term “partial-birth abortion” is “political spin.”
Just imagine that — being more upset over unsanctioned terminology than by the act of stabbing a living baby in the back of the head and sucking out her brains.
As even abortion activists explain, partial birth abortion is not substantially different from other abortion procedures. The goal is to end the life of the child and extract his or her dead body with as little damage to the mother as possible.
The child killed in partial birth abortion is not a “potential life” but a living and fully formed child. Partial birth abortions target babies late in the second trimester and through the third trimester, past the point of viability and months or weeks away from the child reaching full term.
Prenatal children can feel pain as early as 12 weeks. One can hardly conceive of the excruciating pain of being stabbed in the neck with scissors.
Jackson researched the gruesome reality of this brutal act extensively. Yet she worked to defend it and has continued to defend the brutalizing and killing of the unborn for decades since. This indicates that she lacks the basic moral compass necessary to hold any position of authority, much less a seat on the nation’s highest court of justice.
Following the injustice of Stenberg v. Carhart, pro-life groups went to work on making the public aware of the horrors of partial birth abortion. The movement successfully lobbied for the passage of a partial birth abortion ban in Congress in 2003, prohibiting partial birth abortions in all 50 states.
Unlike the Nebraska law struck down in Stenberg v. Carhart, the federal measure banning partial birth abortion withstood legal challenge. In 2007 — with Jackson’s Supreme Court clerkship long over — the court upheld the federal ban on partial birth abortion in Gonzales v. Carhart.
While speaking on the Senate floor in 1996, then-Senator Rick Santorum expressed the views of many Americans when he conveyed shock at the fact that such legislation was even being debated. What civilized society debates whether children should or shouldn’t be executed in the birth canal? As Santorum was speaking, he noted how deafening the cries of the babies killed would be if only we could hear them. At that moment, a child in the gallery wailed as if offering a haunting endorsement of Santorum’s words.
Jackson is fully apprised of the brutality of abortion, yet there is every reason to believe she will work alongside Biden and the abortion industry to extend the brutal status quo as long as she can. Ketanji Brown Jackson is unqualified to serve, and all people — most especially the preborn — deserve better.
Kristan Hawkins is president of Students for Life of America & Students for Life Action. Follow her @KristanHawkins or subscribe to her podcast, Explicitly Pro-Life.
