Life Legal filed an amicus brief this week with the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in a key pro-life case involving Pennsylvania’s prohibition on taxpayer funding of abortion.
Allegheny Reproductive Health, together with three Planned Parenthood affiliates and three other independent abortion mills, sued Pennsylvania — seeking to force the state to pay for abortion.
Over 35 years ago, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously held that the ban on taxpayer funding for abortion was constitutional. (Fischer v. Dept. of Pub. Welfare, 1985) But now, decades later, abortionists are claiming that case was wrongly decided and that the abortion funding ban “inflicts severe harm on women” and “continue[s] to limit women’s equal participation in society.”
So-called “pro-choice” advocates no longer argue that abortion should be safe and rare. Instead, they argue that women can only participate in society if they are allowed – and encouraged – to kill their children.
The abortionists also claim that having an abortion and having a child are the “same right” exercised in “different ways,” and that the state may not distinguish between these different ways. This equation is patently absurd. As we ask in our brief, does this mean that, if a state subsidizes fine art, it must also subsidize pornography? Of course not. About two-thirds of all states have laws similar to Pennsylvania’s — laws that prohibit taxpayer funding for abortion. States have the right to prefer childbirth over child killing and to allocate their funding accordingly.
The hidden Assumption behind pro-abortion arguments in this case is that pro-life taxpayers have no rights of their own.
The abortion mill is represented by abortion fanatic David Cohen as well as Planned Parenthood attorneys and the law firm Troutman Pepper, which had gross revenues of over $900 million last year.
Life Legal is working with a team of private attorneys and pro-life organizations to ensure that the prohibition on state funding for abortion is upheld.