The consequences of elections

In 2009, newly-elected President Barack Obama said, “Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.”

Unfortunately, though, it is the unborn that have continued to lose. Even as the number of abortions are continuing to drop nationwide – 31,000 fewer abortions last year – and while 53 abortion clinics closed in 2015 alone, black children are still being aborted at five times the rate of white children.

Abortion is the No. 1 killer of black lives in America.

And yet, Planned Parenthood (where a third of their facilities operate in primarily black neighborhoods) continues to receive almost exclusive Democrat Party support and protection, plus over a half-billion dollars in taxpayer money. Actually, taxpayer funding accounts for 41 percent of Planned Parenthood’s overall revenue.

And while it claims to provide other, vital medical services for women, abortions make up 94 percent of Planned Parenthood’s pregnancy services, even though abortions performed to save the life of the mother occur less than 1 percent of the time.

In fact, even when you combine all of the non-life threatening health issues, that number increases only to 2.8 percent.

That means there are over one million babies whose lives were taken last year for reasons that were wholly unrelated to the health of the mother.

This is important because being prolife about babies should not come at the expense of being pro-life about women. Obviously, when two lives are threatened and only one can be saved, doctors must always save that life. But this argument – that abortion must remain legal to protect the health of women – is a smokescreen because those instances are almost non-existent, according to the federal government’s own statistics.

Nevertheless, the pro-life community is making progress in the efforts to protect the unborn, and to support life, even after the past seven years of proabortion policies from Washington, D.C.

The incessant prayers, the marches and events like Bishop Duca’s Annual Pro-Life Banquet or the Ark-La-Tex Pregnancy Crisis Center Dinner, keep the candle of this miracle-in-progress lit – and burning brightly for even those who might not yet know why we believe what we believe.

There have been some recent legal developments regarding Louisiana’s Unsafe Abortion Protection Act, which went into effect Sept. 1, 2014 and I wanted to briefly mention those. This is regarding the law that requires physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their facility.

As you may know, the law was authored by State Rep. Katrina Jackson, from Monroe, to combat what she calls, “The No. 1 genocide in the African- American community: abortion.”

And despite being passed with large majorities in the Louisiana legislature, and after being signed into law by the governor in 2014, abortion providers have repeatedly fought back.

This past January, they met with some success, as a federal district judge said requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at a local hospital violated the constitutional right to an abortion established by the Supreme Court in 1973.

Then, late last month, the 5th U.S.

Circuit Court of Appeals went the other direction, and blocked that decision, which allowed the law to go into effect – namely, requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at a local hospital.

But no sooner than this law was in effect, the U.S. Supreme Court, moved to temporarily block the law from going into effect. This allowed two recently closed abortion clinics to reopen for the business.

Although, we might need to draw a diagram to keep up with the legal backand-forth here, stay with me.

You see, this same law was enacted by the State of Texas, before ours, and their law is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court to determine its constitutionality. Meanwhile, there are seven other states with similar laws, just like ours, that no doubt will be affected by the ruling in the Texas matter (which is expected at the end of June).

And with the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, there are only eight justices now.

If there was a tie vote in our case, our Louisiana state law would remain in place and enforceable.

The importance of the next Supreme Court justice being pro-life cannot be understated, especially since Justice Scalia was perhaps the most passionate abortion opponent, among all of the justices.

And one last note: If you feel that being pro-choice is different than being pro-abortion (because you wouldn’t choose it for yourself, but it’s OK for someone else), please remember prochoice voters and pro-abortion voters, are almost always two peas in a pod when it comes to voting on election day. But whichever way you nuance it, you either oppose legal protection for the innocent unborn, or you don’t.

So, yes, Obama was right on this one.

Elections do have consequences, and as the November election approaches, the consequences of this election for the unborn, perhaps like never before, is truly a matter of life or death.

Louis R. Avallone is a Shreveport businessman and attorney. He is also a former aide to U.S. Representative Jim McCrery and editor of The Caddo Republican. His columns have appeared regularly in The Forum since 2007. Follow him on Facebook, on Twitter @louisravallone or by email at louisavallone@mac.com.