May 6, 2022
Obama and Michelle Call to Arms Over Roe v. Wade
By
Jeannie DeAngelis
On April 21, 2022, Barack Obama spoke at a cyber symposium hosted by Stanford University. During that address, the former president
attempted to redefine the meaning of free speech. Obama argued that in order to safeguard America from opinions he considers dangerous, government regulation of the First Amendment, via constitutional modification, was more than justified.
Fast forward two weeks, on May 3rd, after the news leaked that the U.S. Supreme Court is close to overturning
the decision Justice Samuel Alito called “egregiously wrong from the start,” Barack, along with his wife Michelle, immediately responded by contradicting the argument he made at Stanford.
Barack Obama had just decreed that, among other things,
questioning the 2020 election result threatens democratic ideals and must be silenced through federal rule. Then when the
Roe v. Wade information leaked, the former president did a 180-degree about-face and issued directives that if the highest court in the land decides
Roe v. Wade is bad law, and throws abortion back to the states, public rejection of the decision is necessary as well as exercising the First Amendment
right to protest.
Simply put, depending on the ideological leaning of the topic, one week, the right to free speech should be restricted and the “flawed” Constitution adjusted, and the next week, the right to free speech exercised and the sacred Constitution protected.
The couple explained why that’s necessary in the following way:
Today, millions of Americans woke up fearing that their essential freedoms under the Constitution were at risk. If the Supreme Court ultimately decides to overturn the landmark case of Roe v. Wade, then it will not only reverse nearly 50 years of precedent – it will relegate the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues.
That rant should have begun by ‘relegating’ “intensely personal decisions” to the ‘before you participate in the procreative act’ column. Next the statement could have explained to America why the precedent set by the First Amendment in 1791 is less of a pattern for freedom than a poorly thought-out decision made in 1973?
Please note, when addressing the need to oppose this controversy, both Biden and Obama coincidentally mentioned the word “
whims.”
Nevertheless, what Barack and Michelle failed to acknowledge in their quickly released communiqué was that there are “millions of [other] Americans” who’ve also woken up every day for the last 50 years and who lament the 62 million lives snuffed out “under [the auspices of a] Constitution” established to protect both “life and liberty,” neither of which was meant to exclude one from the other. Those Americans are thankful that at least on the federal level, the “essential freedoms under the Constitution” will also apply to the 3,000 unborn Americans whose lives are “at risk” every single day.
What Obama shared, as if it was settled truth, was that despite 98% of all abortions being solely for convenience’s sake, he and his wife believe the more than 60 million women who disposed of 20% of the current U.S. population did not approach the decision “lightly.” How he knows that statistic is anyone’s guess.
Ironically, Obama's statement also argued that ceasing federal support for abortion "pose
grave risks" to the health, fertility, and life of – wait for it – schoolgirls without cars and poor working women who choose abortion over the lives of their children.
Wait! Isn’t the former president amongst those who insist federal control of gun ownership ensures the “grave risks” posed by guns would be eliminated? If that’s true, and government equals safety and the assurance that illegal firearms will be impossible to access if gun laws are enacted, why then doesn’t the same hold true when it comes to access to illegal abortion? If restricting guns saves American lives, so should restricting abortion.