Thursday, August 1, 2024, will go down as a dark day in post-Roe Utah. The event (or decision, in this case) that took place, with the ominous implications it portends for the state of Utah, could have been lifted straight off the pages of The Book of Mormon. More on that in a moment.
For those unaware, earlier that day, the Utah Supreme Court published its ruling that the pause on Utah’s trigger law, a near-total ban on abortions, will stay in place while the case goes to trial—a process that will no doubt take years.
More shocking than their abject disregard for human life was the baseless justification the four justices provided for their nonsensical at best and nefarious at worst conclusion.
Before we get into that, here is a brief history of the trigger law:
In 2020, two years before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, Utah passed a trigger law that would immediately limit abortions in almost all circumstances in the event that the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn Roe v Wade. However, within days of Roe being overturned, a district court judge named Roger Stone filed an injunction against it, thus preventing the law from taking effect. As a result, abortions up to 18 weeks were allowed to continue in Utah with no restrictions.
Fast forward to August 1,2024, more than two years and 6,000 dead babies later, the Utah State Supreme Court voted 4-1 to uphold the injunction, which means innocent blood will continue to flow unchecked from the altars of death in Utah.
Meanwhile, the lower courts will battle it out over the next several years, costing the taxpayers millions of dollars and precious time. By then, upwards of 10,000 more innocent babies will be victims of savage but “legalized” murder because of this injunction filed by one man on behalf of Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, the largest provider (and profiteer) of abortion in Utah.
Their Justification?
Essentially, their reasoning was based on two equally ill-justified notions.
First is the wildly speculative claim by Planned Parenthood Association of Utah (the claimant) that they and their patients “would be irreparably harmed” by the trigger law. But what is this claim based on? Is there any precedent for that claim? Can they provide any historical data or evidence to back it up? To date, none has been provided.
Apparently, the mere supposition of “irreparable harm” is enough to persuade the court. But it doesn’t pass the sniff test for the thinking person.
According to Planned Parenthood Utah’s website, they offer at least twelve other services besides abortion. This means that, by their own admission, abortion is neither their only purpose for existence nor, by extension, their only source of revenue. It is simply just one of the “services” they offer.
Therefore, if the trigger law prohibits just one “service” (abortion) but does not affect more than a dozen others they provide (such as STD testing, contraception, breast exams, UTI treatment, etc.), how does that constitute irreparable harm to PPAU? Abortion is just one egg in their full basket, albeit the golden one.
Until they provide persuasive evidence or data demonstrating that actual “harm” would be done, which they have not, we are left to conclude that the only “irreparable harm” the trigger law could cause PPAU is to its bottom line.
As for the ostensible harm the trigger law would potentially cause their patients, consider this: though a portion of their female patients seeking abortions would no longer obtain them in the clinic, they would still have the option (thanks to other despicable pro-abortion laws) to go online and, with a few clicks on any number of out of state websites, get abortion pills delivered to their door in two days.
Or, if these women prefer to have an abortion in a clinical setting, they could drive a couple of hours to any number of facilities in nearby Colorado, especially since these women are welcomed with open arms by Colorado’s abortionists, who view it as an act of courage. That being the case, how does a three-hour drive result in “irreparable harm” to a patient?
(Other than, of course, the harm it would do to their robust revenue stream.)
The bottom line is that Planned Parenthood of Utah can still provide “care” to a vast majority of their patients who are seeking services other than abortion. And those women who are seeking abortion have several other convenient options available to them that do not constitute “irreparable harm” in any way, shape or form.
To show how absurd and ill-conceived this line of thinking is, let’s analogize PPAU’s self-serving, unsubstantiated claim of being “harmed” by the trigger law to the opioid crisis that is killing Utahns at a rate of ten per week— well over 500 per year. Granted, this is not a perfect analogy because not every single dose of opioids is fatal, whereas every abortion is. But let’s say that the voters of Utah passed a law to ban (or severely limit) pharmacies from dispensing opioids on demand to whoever asked for them. Then, within days of passing the law, an injunction is filed against the new law by, wait for it, big pharma giant Johnson and Johnson, maker of the opioids. To seek support for their case, they hold a press conference on the Utah State Capitol steps and, with a straight face, proceed to demand the injunction on the grounds that they, Johnson & Johnson, would be “irreparably harmed” if opioids were not dispensed on demand to anyone, anywhere, for any reason.
How many of you would side with Johnson and Johnson? Would you feel sorry for the financial hit they would take by not creating tens of thousands of new drug addicts every year who would eventually overdose at a rate of ten (or more) per week?
How, then, is the injunction filed on behalf of Planned Parenthood any different? Well, other than the fact that Planned Parenthood is responsible for over 3,000 deaths per year in Utah, not just 500 like Johnson & Johnson.
Now, let’s examine the court’s second but equally hollow justification for upholding the injunction. According to the majority opinion, the injunction “would not be adverse to the public interest.”
What?
That’s an awfully nebulous statement that, frankly, creates more questions than it answers.
First, what exactly is “the public interest? How is that determined or measured? Furthermore, who decides who qualifies as a member of “the public” and who does not? If that is something the justices are authorized to determine, then surely we could expect them to employ the legal definition of “public” which according to www.cornelllaw.edu is “The body politic, or the people of a state, nation or municipality.” Online dictionary Merriam Webster defines public as “The people as a whole: populace. A group of people having common interests or characteristics.”
As you can see, neither definition excludes any segments of the populace based on their relative size or age. Yet, for unfathomable reasons, the justices’ majority opinion fails to recognize the pre-born as part of “the public” precisely because of their relative size and age. This is how they justify their jaw-dropping claim that facilitating the deaths of preborn babies up to 18 weeks “would not have an adverse effect on the public.”
Really? The brutal deaths of thousands of our fellow Utahns do not qualify as an “adverse” effect?
If that doesn’t, what does?
For these reasons and more, I can unequivocally say that the “majority opinion” of four Utah Supreme Court Justices does nothing to convince me (nor the majority of Utahns who supported the trigger law) that lifting the injunction against it would cause “irreparable harm” to any citizen of Utah. Indeed, the opposite is true. The trigger law expressly protects the most vulnerable of our citizens from the excruciating and “irreparable harm” of a brutal death. That four Utah Supreme Court Justices can’t see that demonstrable and irrefutable truth reveals how far we as a nation have slid into an abyss of iniquity. No wonder the Sword of God’s vengeance hangs over this nation.
“Behold, the sword of vengeance hangeth over you; and the time soon cometh that he avengeth the blood of the saints upon you, for he will not suffer their cries any longer.” (Mormon 8:41)
Speaking of the Book of Mormon, I mentioned in the opening paragraph that this latest chapter of the trigger law injunction presents some eerie similarities to an event in 3 Nephi (which I discuss in chapter 10 of #RIPENED). I think it is highly relevant and important to note that the final act of corruption that brought down the wrath of God on the Nephites in 34 A.D. was perpetrated by none other than a group of wicked judges who also had no regard for the sanctity of human life.
Details of this murderous intrigue are found in 3 Nephi 6:20-23, where we learn that several corrupt judges conspired to secretly put to death a group of heavenly messengers. Then, they formed a secret combination that protected them from justice. This was the final straw for the Nephites. It set in motion a series of events with cataclysmic results, and within four years, they were utterly swept off the earth in the most violent show of God’s wrath imaginable. See 3 Nephi 8,9. Does that event portend of things to come for those who support corrupt judges in our day?
President Benson warned us that “…those who learn nothing from history are condemned to repeat it.” How can we ignore his prophetic warning when The Book of Mormon is the most relevant history book we have at our disposal?
So…what can YOU do?
Call your state senators and representatives today and ask them to please work with leadership to call a special legislative session this month (August 2024) to propose a Constitutional Amendment to Utah’s Constitution that includes protection for unborn babies.
Then, pray that those in positions of power will do the right thing for Utah’s entire “public” population, especially those without a voice that can be heard…yet.
For a list of your state representatives and senators, please go to www.utaheagleforum.org
Time is of the essence!
