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TPKs Stories

  • In Memoriam: Celebrities Lost 1835

    June 27th, 2022
    • https://www.evotravelagent.com/vlharvey

    Check out my travel site for Evolution Travel for booking a trip for cruises, religious travel, weddings, honeymoons, family vacations, reunions, and more.

  • Happy Birthday: June 27, 2022

    June 27th, 2022

    Bruce Johnston, 80

    J. J. Abrams, 56

    Tobey Maguire, 47

    Khloe Kardashian, 38

    H. E. R., 25

    Julia Duffy, 71

    Isabelle Adjani, 67

    Lorrie Morgan, 63

    Draco Rosa, 53

    Edward “Grapevine” Fordham, Jr., 52

    Jo Frost, 52

    Yancey Arias, 51

    Christian Kane, 50

    Leigh Nash, 46

    Zach Williams, 44

    Drake Bell, 36

    Madylin Sweeten, 31

    Katelyn MacMullen, 27

    Lauren Jauregui, 26

    Chandler Riggs, 23

    Vera Wang, 73

    Dan Jurgens, 63

    Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872-February 9, 1906)

    Helen Keller (June 27, 1880-June 1, 1968)

    Bob Keeshan (June 27, 1927-January 23, 2004)

    H. Ross Perot (June 27, 1930-July 9, 2019)

  • In Memoriam: Celebrities Lost 1836

    June 27th, 2022

    James Madison, 4th U.S. President

    Aaron Burr

    Davy Crockett

    Betsy Ross

    Andre Marie Ampere

    Charles X of France

    William Barret Travis

    Stephen Austin

    Nathan Meyer Rothschild

    James Bowie

    William Godwin

    Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier

    Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes

    John By

    Herman of Alaska

    John Loudon McAdam

    Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle

    Antoine Destutt de Tracy

    Maria Cristina of Savoy

    Corn Planter

    Claude-Louis Navier

    Carle Vernet

    Antoine Laurent de Jussieu

    Johann I Joseph, Prince of Liechtenstein

    Tenskwatawa

    Anthony of Saxony

    Francisco Espoz Y Mina

    John Molson

    Antonio Franconi

    James Mill

    Anton Reicha

    Maria Malibran

  • Happy Birthday: June 26, 2022

    June 27th, 2022

    Chris Isaak, 66

    Patty Smyth, 65

    Chris O’Donnell, 52

    Nick Offerman, 52

    Aubrey Plaza, 38

    Adriana Grande, 29

    Dave Grusin, 88

    Billy Davis, Jr., 84

    George Fame, 79

    Clive Francis, 76

    Brenda Holloway, 76

    Michael Paul Chan, 72

    Robert Davi, 71

    Mick Jones, 67

    Gedde Watanabe, 67

    Teri Nunn, 63

    Harriet Wheeler, 59

    Eddie Perez, 54

    Colin Greenwood, 53

    Paul Thomas Anderson, 52

    Sean Hayes, 52

    Matt Letscher,  52

    Jeff Franken Stein, 48

    Gretchen Wilson, 48

    Nathan Followill, 43

    Ryan Tedder, 43

    Jason Schwartzman, 42

    Jeanette McCurdy, 30

    Derek Jeter, 48

    Abner Doubleday (June 26, 1819-January 26, 1893)

    William Lear (June 26, 1902-May 14, 1978)

    Peter Lorre (June 26, 1904-May 23, 1964)

    Viktor Schrekengost (June 26, 1906-January 26, 2008)

  • In Memoriam: Celebrities Lost 1837

    June 27th, 2022

    Alexander Pushkin

    Queen Wilhemine

    Giacomo Leopardi

    John Constable

    Elijah Parish Lovejoy

    Lukijan Musicki

    Johann Nebomuk Hummel

    George Buchner

    Diego Portales

    Joseph Yates

    Samuel Wesley

  • Happy Birthday: June 25, 2022

    June 27th, 2022

    June Lockhart, 97

    Carly Simon, 77

    Jimmie Walker, 75

    Ricky Gervais, 61

    Linda Cardellini, 47

    Busy Philipps, 43

    Eddie Floyd, 85

    Barbara Montgomery, 83

    Mary Beth Peil, 82

    Ian McDonald, 76

    Tim Finn, 70

    David Paich, 68

    Michael Sabatino, 67

    Erica Gimpel, 58

    Richie Rich, 55

    Sean Kelly, 51

    Mike Kroegerof, 50

    George Orwell (June 25, 1903-January 21, 1950)

    Eric Carle (June 1929-May 23, 2021)

    Anthony Bourdain (June 25, 1956-June 8, 2018)

    George Michael (June 25, 1963-December 25, 2016)

  • A Critic’s Review of General Hospital: Choppy Pacing & Family Feuds

    June 26th, 2022

    When it comes to General Hospital, every fan has their own opinion – and Soap Hub is no different. For five days, we sat and watched the good, the bad, and everything in between, and now we offer you a handy review, and a cheeky critique, of the GH week that was.

    General Hospital: A Critic’s Week In Review

    I really wanted to like the special, Laura Collins (Genie Francis) centric episode of General Hospital, but I just didn’t. The pacing was choppy, I objected to some of the characters used therein – surprise, surprise, Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Benard) and Carly Corinthos (Laura Wright) was shoehorned in – and nothing ultimately resulted from it. There was no resolution – we still don’t know who founded the group – and even a cursory look at the spoilers proves that they’ll be no follow-up.

    And while I did appreciate seeing that retro clip of Bobbie Spencer (Jacklyn Zeman) rocking poor Laura’s world, haven’t we seen these two bury the hatchet about a half dozen times? Stop going back to that well. It’s dry.

    The obvious highlight, and the scene that made every lackluster one before and after it palpable, was the one between Francis and Jeff Kober’s Cyrus Renault. Talk about a master call. And you want to know something, Cyrus had a point. Laura’s worship of Sonny blinds her.

    My final takeaway from the whole enterprise: Francis is just as luminous now as she was back in 1978. How this is even possible one will never know. Perhaps talent staves off the aging process.

    Further GH Musings

    * Quotable General Hospital

    Olivia: The Quartermaine’s may be a little bit backstab-y. Maybe, occasionally, a little bit of money-grubbing. Or, once in a blue moon, even a little bit bloodthirsty. Okay, nobody ever said that this family did not have its –
    Brook Lynn: Foibles?
    Michael: Faults?
    Brook Lynn: Fatal flaws?
    Olivia: I was going to say moments!

    * Was anybody else thrown by how…reasonable Portia Robinson (Brook Kerr) was when apprised of her daughter’s excursion to The Highsider?

    * While I was utterly thrilled with Ned Quartermaine’s (Wally Kurth) decision to throw his all behind Valentin Cassadine (James Patrick Stuart), I wish it had come about simply because Ned felt a certain way about how Michael Corinthos (Chad Duell) and Drew Cain (Cameron Mathison) were treating him.

    Instead, it seemed like it was Lucy Coe’s (Lynn Herring) caution that without a common foe to rally against the Q’s would resume backbiting one another that spurred Ned to take the action that he did.

  • A Critic’s Review of Days of Our Lives: The Art of Stretching a Story

    June 26th, 2022

    When it comes to Days of our Lives, every fan has their own opinion – and Soap Hub is no different. For five days we sat and watched the good, the bad, and everything in between, and now we offer you a handy review, and a cheeky critique, of the Days of our Lives week that was.

    Days of our Lives: A Critic’s Week In Review

    Given that Days of our Lives will soon be losing Lamon Archey and Sal Stowers, I understand that the soap had to bring the truth about TR Coates’s (William Christian) shooting to light, and, of course, they wanted to do so in a way that would ring out the most drama possible…and stunning confessions at a wedding are a genre staple.

    And just to be clear, I loved Abe Carver (James Reynolds) and Paulina Price Carver’s (Jackée Harry) wedding ceremony itself. But much like the buildup to the Abigail Deveraux DiMera’s (Marci Miller) whodunit, the whole exercise was contrived and rushed.

    The service was planned in just a few hours, out-of-state guests were able to fly in at a moment’s notice, and Lani buckled after being haunted by TR’s ghost for all of two days.

    Sure, this is Days of our Lives – the soap where anything and everything can happen – but would it have killed the writers to actually build to this moment? Heck, I would have been far more satisfied if the proceedings had been stretched for merely two or three more shows.

    Imagine it: Abe and Paulina set the date on Monday; preparations get underway on Tuesday; guests begin pouring in on Wednesday; the ceremony commences on Thursday and climaxes with Lani’s confession; on Friday we experience the fallout, and all throughout the specter of TR taunts Lani.

    There I go again, playing armchair head writer.

    Further DAYS Musings

    * If Chanel Dupree DiMera (Raven Bowens) were smart, she’d kick those squabbling, selfish twins to the curb and find herself a more mature and settled partner.

    * Nobody, but nobody can pull a face that screams unrequited love written all over like Greg Vaughan. I might not be pulling for Eric and Nicole Walker (Arianne Zucker) to reunite, but gosh darn it Vaughan doesn’t make me want to…almost.

  • A Critic’s Review of The Bold and the Beautiful: A Special Effects Surprise

    June 26th, 2022

    When it comes to The Bold and the Beautiful, every fan has their own opinion – and Soap Hub is no different. For five days, we sat and watched the good, the bad, and everything in between, and now we offer you a handy review, and a cheeky critique, of B&B’s week that was.

    The Bold and the Beautiful: A Critic’s Week In Review

    Boy, that stunt sure was something. Was it perfect? No. I’m still wondering how Sheila Carter (Kimberlin Brown) ramming into the back of Li Finnegan’s (Naomi Matsuda) vehicle caused it to erupt in a fireball. Also, where did that random pier come from? Weren’t they just driving straight on an interstate highway?

    But you know what? Kudos and a big thank-you to The Bold and the Beautiful for spending the time and the money. I honestly cannot remember the last time a soap opera aired a special effects-laden spectacular of that magnitude.

    If only the whole thing hadn’t come at the expense of Matsuda and the dumbing down of Li.

    Further B&B Musings

    * All this time has gone, and I still can’t quite get a handle on Paris Buckingham (Diamond White). I’d love if once and for all B&B could decide who she is and what makes her tick.

    * If Ridge Forrester (Thorsten Kaye) is as concerned for Brooke Logan Forrester (Katherine Kelly Lang) and her safety as he claims, why not just move back home and protect her? Or, baring that, why not insist that she come and stay at the Forrester compound until Sheila is back behind bars?

    * Remember when an episode of The Bold and the Beautiful would be chock full of flashbacks to Sheila switching the labels on the champagne bottles and Brooke wondering aloud, “Why did I drink that night?! Why did I so want to drink on New Years?” I miss those days. Now the episodes are featuring audio snippets of scenes that took place minutes earlier. As if we’d forget what was just said.

  • A Critic’s Review of The Young and the Restless: The Glory of Gloria

    June 26th, 2022

    When it comes to Young and the Restless, every fan has their own opinion – and Soap Hub is no different. For five days, we sat and watched the good, the bad, and everything in between, and now we offer you a handy review, and a cheeky critique, of Y&R’s week that was.

    The Young and the Restless: A Critic’s Week In Review

    What was there to like about last week’s The Young and the Restless? Well, the twelve or so minutes that Judith Chapman was on my screen were absolutely Gloria-ous, and what I truly appreciated was the subtle dig that the writer of the episode took at us viewers.

    We do take Gloria for granted. We do look at Gloria as a big joke. A most welcome joke to be sure, but a joke nonetheless. How nice it was to be reminded that Gloria is someone who has been through it. She’s survived men walking out on her, men who abused and used her, she’s gone for years at a time with barely two nickels to rub together, and yet she’s still here, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to greet the day’s challenges. If only we could all be a Gloria.

    I’m also happy to report that I might soon owe Josh Griffith, The Young and the Restless head writer, an apology – and if I do, you’ll find it this column. It does seem like we’re in for a ‘Victoria Newman Was Scamming Ashland All Along’ plot point, and if that proves true, then I will, metaphorically, eat my words which condemned Griffith for not understanding the character of Victoria (Amelia Heinle). Lulling Ashland (Robert Newman) into a false sense of security so that she can swipe the remaining bribe that he accepted from her family out from under him is exactly the kind of thing that old-school Victoria would do.

    Also, can I just admit to you all how I howled every time the camera would cut to a shot of Phyllis Summers (Michelle Stafford) in her “disguise”? If the point was to be inconspicuous, big fail. If the point was to entertain, well done Y&R! I swear that there were times that Stafford was literally vamping for the camera, especially in those scenes where she was eavesdropping on Diane Jenkins (Susan Walters) and Michael Baldwin (Christian Le Blanc). Surely you saw her, standing there one hand on hip the other placed just so on the hat…

    Further Y&R Musings

    * First and foremost, massive kudos to trailblazer Mishael Morgan! Second, I hope her momentous win will translate into some actual story. Maybe, we could actually see Amanda Sinclair’s visit with her mother. Maybe, we could actually watch the two women reckon with the past, their present, and their very shaky future. Just a thought or two.

    * Yay, more scenes of Noah Newman (Rory Gibson) and Allie Nguyen (Kelsey Wang), I believe said no one, ever. Are there fans of this bourgeoning couple out there? If you exist, write me in the comments below and tell me why. Me? I still holding out hope that the Powers That Be at The Young and the Restless get Morgan Obenreder back as Crystal Porter and pair her opposite Gibson. Now there was chemistry.

  • Soap Hub Performer of the Week for GH: Genie Francis

    June 26th, 2022

    General Hospital dedicated its 15,000 program to the show’s star — Genie Francis, who has played Laura Webber Collins since 1977. Laura has gone from angst-ridden teen to the confident mayor of Port Charles and was appropriately highlighted in this milestone episode. Soap Hub is honoring Francis with Performer of the Week for GH honors upon the beloved actress.

    Genie Francis – Performer of the Week

    The episode began with Laura getting out of her car at the General Hospital parking lot. “All my life this place has been a sanctuary — a place where I felt safe and welcome, almost a second home and today will be no different no matter what trouble I’m facing,” Laura said about GH. The sentiment likely also holds true about Francis and General Hospital (the show, that is — not the Port Charles medical facility).

    We knew Laura was facing jeopardy but it took her ex-husband Scotty Baldwin (Kin Shriner) to inform viewers just what Laura’s predicament was. She was being recalled as town mayor courtesy of a group of folks who wanted a recall put on the ballot. This story beat allowed Francis to shine as Laura did what he did best — overcome the odds. We’ve seen Laura conquer overcoming the odds numerous times. She’s battled a mad man who wanted to freeze the world so, it wasn’t surprising for Laura to shoot down the idea of squashing the recall. She is ready to tackle the problem head-on!

    Flashbacks were peppered throughout the episode, reminding us just how long Francis and Laura have been a part of our lives. We saw Laura and Scotty get married in the park; the lifelong love Laura expressed for Scotty that day has changed over the years into a deep friendship. We were also treated to a scene from Laura and Bobbie Spencer‘s (Jacklyn Zeman) tumultuous early days when Bobbie, wearing Laura’s ring from Scotty around her neck, taunted Laura, making her think that Scott had chosen to be with her.

    Laura was relieved to discover that Bobbie thought she was signing a petition to save the whales and not a petition to have her recalled. Later, we learned at the show’s halfway mark that Laura’s half-brother Cyrus Renault (the always-terrific Jeff Kober) played a role with the group that wants to recall Laura. Cyrus taunted Laura about the rise in crime since she became mayor. Laura shot back that there’s been less crime since Cyrus was put behind bars. “Where was God in that?” Laura asked Cyrus about the presence of the Lord when he wrote the editorial asking for her to be recalled.

    “Cyrus, I forgive you. Thank you for watching out for Port Charles,” Laura said seemingly earnestly, leaving Cyrus speechless. Safely away from the glass window that separated her from her convicted sibling, Laura composed herself, proud that she’d stood up to her attacker.

    The episode ended with most of Port Charles (well, most of the show’s current cast) gathering at Charlie’s Pub after a softball game. The episode ended with Genie Francis’s Laura voicing her rebuttal, touting the positivity in Port Charles. “We’re not just a town, we’re a family,” Laura said. “We take care of each other.” She closed by saying that it was a possibility that she’d lose the recall however, she remains hopeful that everyone would continue to grow under a successor. Brava to GH for giving Genie Francis this special episode — it was a gift to not only her but also the show’s many fans.

  • Soap Hub Performer of the Week for Y&R: Judith Chapman

    June 26th, 2022

    The Young and the Restless viewers know that Gloria Abbott Bardwell will do whatever she has to in order to survive, including throwing her own children under the bus. Ultimately, people underestimate her, but she’s still standing. For her performance, Soap Hub Performer of the Week honors for Y&R is presented to Gloria’s portrayer, Judith Chapman.

    Judith Chapman — Y&R Performer of the Week

    In a surprising moment, Gloria walked right into Society interrupting a tense moment between Chelsea Lawson (Melissa Claire Egan) and Chloe Mitchell Fisher (Elizabeth Hendrickson). Chapman literally livened up the scene with the flair she injects into Gloria. Not only is her fashion, makeup, and hair on point, but also she brings the gestures and facial expressions to make the whole larger-than-life thing work.

    While Chloe seemed wary of her zany mother-in-law, Glo spoke right to that. She mentioned that she may just be seen as comic relief, and that moment resonated both on-screen and with fans because Judith Chapman as Gloria often brings lighter moments to the show. Ultimately though, Gloria and Chapman are still standing, in part, because people underestimated them.

    Any week that brings Gloria and Chapman back to our screens is a welcome one. We love watching what new trouble she manages to get her on-screen alter ego in every time she’s in storylines. At this point, she’s a spiritual guru, and we’d love to see more of that. Bravo Judith Chapman on a superb performance.

  • Soap Hub Performer of the Week for B&B: Lawrence Saint-Victor

    June 26th, 2022

    We’ve seen Lawrence Saint-Victor play a wide range of emotions since Carter Walton began an affair with Quinn Fuller Forrester. Now, The Bold and the Beautiful has cast him in the role of a guilt-ridden man in love who is going to marry one woman in the hopes he can forget another. For his passionate performance, Soap Hub bestows Performer of the Week honors for B&B on Saint-Victor.

    Lawrence Saint-Victor – Performer of the Week

    Folks do all kinds of crazy things to get over heartbreak. B&B has tasked Lawrence Saint-Victor with having his character propose marriage to Paris Buckingham (Diamond White) hoping it will help him move on as the woman he truly loves — Quinn Fuller Forrester (Rena Sofer).

    When Carter proposed to Paris, it was as if he was trying to convince himself — not her — that this was right move. “I was deluding myself,” Carter explained to Paris, who expressed surprise over Carter bringing up their future. “I wasn’t seeing things the way they really are.”

    The irony, of course, is that Carter is deluding himself. He may not know it yet but committing to Paris won’t make him happy in the long run. Of course, on one hand, he’d be lucky to spend the rest of his life with Paris. She’s kind, bright, full of energy and positivity. She also sings beautifully and is great with kids. However, it’s not fair to her — or Carter — as he is still in love with Quinn.

    Saint-Victor is bringing an understated passion to this storyline. We see him wanting to burst out the truth but he can’t or won’t. We’ve seen Carter passionately declare he wants what everyone appears to have — a mate, a family, a future. Time will tell if he gets those things in life with Paris or Quinn or someone else. What we do know is that Carter’s portrayer, Lawrence Saint-Victor, has captured the hearts of B&B viewers with his compelling performances.

  • Soap Hub Performer of the Week for Days: Sal Stowers

    June 26th, 2022

    They say that confession is good for the soul, and that was certainly true for DAYS’ Lani Grant. Her admission that it was she, and not her mother who shot and killed TR Coates proved to be the catharsis she was in desperate need of – and it earned actress Sal Stowers Soap Hub’s Performer of the Week honors.

    Sal Stowers – Performer of the Week

    While her alter-ego was in cop mode, Stowers projected gritty determination and affective empathy in equal amounts. But the minute that Lani’s guilty conscience began manifesting itself in the form of a blood-soaked TR (William Christian), Stowers devolved into a panicked mess.

    She pinched her eyes closed, thrust her hands up to her temples, and began to massage them in an effort to dissipate the horror standing before her.

    When TR began to lambast Lani for taking his life and letting Paulina Price (Jackée Harry) take the fall and failing in her duties to uphold the law, Stowers undertook an emotional 180.

    Suddenly in TR’s face, her irises flashing fire, Lani loudly reminded him of his trespasses. “You tried to kill Eli! I had to try to stop you from hurting anyone else!”

    Thanks to Eli’s (Lamon Archey) timely intervention, Lani was brought back to her senses, and for a moment she was free of TR’s specter…but he was still there…waiting and watching…and judging.

    Stowers spent the next several scenes guiding Lani along a knife’s edge. On the surface, she was all smiles; underneath, a nervous wreck.

    When the pressure finally became too much to bear, and Lani stunned those who’d gathered to watch Abe Carver (James Reynolds) and Paulina tie the knot with her revelation, Stowers did so without any discernable hysterics. In point of fact, the very act of owning her actions seemed to lift Lani’s spirit and bring about a sense of peace. Stowers was finally (playing) a woman unburdened.

    Honorable Mention: Susan Seaforth Hayes

    The work she put into Julie Williams’s stirring speech, the one that convinced an entire wedding party to cast a deaf ear to Lani’s truth, is more than worthy of praise, but it’s actually her delivery of the lines, “It doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger. The bastard got what he deserved,” for which we’re recognizing Seaforth Hayes.

  • Weekly Soap Spoilers: June 27-July 1, 2022 on TPKs Stories (Anchor Podcast)

    June 26th, 2022

    • https://anchor.fm/valerie-harvey/episodes/The-Bold-and-the-Beautiful-Weekly-Spoilers-June-27-July-1–2022-e1kfm59
    • https://anchor.fm/valerie-harvey/episodes/The-Young-and-the-Restless-Weekly-Spoilers-June-27-July-1–2022-e1kfmf6
    • https://anchor.fm/valerie-harvey/episodes/General-Hospital-Weekly-Spoilers-June-27-July-1–2022-e1kfmsv
    • https://anchor.fm/valerie-harvey/episodes/Days-of-Our-Lives-Weekly-Spoilers-June-27-July-1–2022-e1kfn3b
  • 49th Annual Daytime Emmys Awards

    June 25th, 2022

    There was more glitz and glamour at the 49th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards than during last year’s ceremony, but the COVID pandemic’s presence was still affecting things.

    The 49th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards: Live Coverage

    That didn’t stop the casts and crew from all the daytime soaps — Days of our Lives, General Hospital, The Bold and the Beautiful, and The Young and the Restless — from celebrating the biggest day of the year — at night. Here is your complete list of winners in the biggest awards below.

    The Winners List

    Outstanding Drama Series
    Beyond Salem, Peacock
    The Bold and the Beautiful, CBS
    Days of our Lives, NBC
    General Hospital, ABC — WINNER
    The Young and the Restless, CBS

    Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Drama Series
    Marci Miller (Abigail DiMera, DAYS)
    Mishael Morgan (Amanda Sinclair, Y&R) — WINNER
    Cynthia Watros (Nina Reeves, GH)
    Laura Wright (Carly Corinthos, GH)
    Arianne Zucker (Nicole Walker, DAYS)

    Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Drama Series
    Peter Bergman (Jack Abbott, Y&R)
    Eric Martsolf (Brady Black, DAYS)
    John McCook (Eric Forrester, B&B) — WINNER
    James Reynolds (Abe Carver, DAYS)
    Jason Thompson (Billy Abbott, Y&R)

    Outstanding Writing Team for a Drama Series
    Beyond Salem, Peacock
    Days of our Lives NBC — WINNER
    General Hospital ABC
    The Young and the Restless CBS

    Outstanding Performance by a Younger Performer in a Drama Series
    Lindsay Arnold (Allie Horton, DAYS)
    Nicholas Alexander Chavez (Spencer Cassadine, GH) — WINNER
    Alyvia Alyn Lind (Faith Newman, Y&R)
    William Lipton (Cameron Webber, GH)
    Sydney Mikayla (Trina Robinson, GH)

    Outstanding Directing Team for a Drama Series
    Beyond Salem, Peacock
    Days of our Lives, NBC
    General Hospital, ABC — WINNER
    The Young and the Restless, CBS

    Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
    Bryton James (Devon Hamilton, Y&R)
    Jeff Kober (Cyrus Renault, GH) — WINNER
    Aaron D. Spears (Justin Barber, B&B)
    James Patrick Stuart (Valentin Cassadine, GH)
    Jordi Vilasuso (Rey Rosales, Y&R)

    Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
    Kimberlin Brown (Sheila Carter, B&B)
    Nancy Lee Grahn (Alexis Davis, GH)
    Stacy Haiduk (Kristen DiMera, DAYS)
    Melissa Ordway (Abby Chancellor, Y&R)
    Kelly Thiebaud (Dr. Britt Westbourne, GH) — WINNER

    Outstanding Performance by a Guest Performer in a Drama Series
    Robert Gossett (Marshall Ashford, GH)
    Ted King (Jack Finnegan, B&B) — WINNER
    Michael Lowry (Dr. Clay Snyder, DAYS)
    Naomi Matsuda (Dr. Li Finnegan, B&B)
    Ptosha Storey (Naya Benedict, Y&R)

    Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series
    Days of our Lives / Beyond Salem NBC | Peacock
    Dogs, Netflix
    General Hospital, ABC
    Start Up, PBS
    The Young and the Restless, CBS — WINNER

    Outstanding Original Song
    Grateful For It All, Y&R — WINNER
    Next To You, Y&R
    Talks With Mama Tina Theme Song, Talks With Mama Tina (Facebook Watch)

    Soap Hub congratulates all the winners of the 49th Annual Daytime Emmys.

    Daytime Emmy History

    In 1972, the first daytime-themed Emmy Awards were handed out during the primetime ceremony, when The Doctors and General Hospital were nominated for Outstanding Achievement in a Daytime Drama — with The Doctors winning the first Best Show Daytime Emmy. Also at that same ceremony, Outstanding Achievement by an Individual in a Daytime Drama was awarded to Mary Fickett from All My Children.

    Soap History

    The Bold and the Beautiful made its debut in 1987 and introduced glitz and glamour to daytime soap operas. It has outlasted other soaps to become a mainstay for many households. Needless to say, three decades of storylines have kept viewers locked in and wanting more. BB airs weekdays on CBS. Check your local listings for air times.

    Days of our Lives made its debut in 1965 and is one of the longest-running daytime soap operas in American history. It has outlasted other soaps to become a mainstay for many households. Needless to say, five decades of storylines have kept viewers locked in and wanting more. DAYS airs weekdays on NBC. Check your local listings for air times.

    General Hospital made its debut in 1963 and is the second longest-running daytime soap opera in American history. The longest-running sudser is Guiding Light. While it’s not the longest-running sudser, General Hospital is the longest-running soap opera currently on air. GH airs weekdays on ABC. Check your local listings for air times.

    The Young and the Restless made its debut in 1973 and introduced more sexual undertones and younger characters to daytime soap operas. It has outlasted other soaps to become a mainstay for many households. Needless to say, four decades of storylines have kept viewers locked in and wanting more. YR airs weekdays on CBS. Check your local listings for air times.

  • The Young and the Restless Weekly Spoilers: June 27-July 1, 2022

    June 25th, 2022

    Victor cooks up a new scheme, Nikki receives a helping hand, Adam has both a reason to celebrate and someone with whom to do it, and Nick contemplates his future. Plus, things could get interesting when several twists impact Ashland and Victoria’s relationship. Will they wind up weathering the storm or allowing their relationship to be washed away for good?

    Friday, June 24:

    Victor directs Michael to put the kibosh on Victoria and Ashland’s plans, and Phyllis calls a reluctant ceasefire with Diane.

    See, Victor? This is why you didn’t get a Father’s Day card from your daughter! What could he expect when he’s out there doing stuff like derailing Victoria’s new venture? Good thing she’s super rich.

    “I’m” and “sorry” are legendarily two of the hardest words to say in the English language, especially in that order. But Phyllis gives it the old college try when she extends an olive branch. Will her efforts be too little, too late? Could be, seeing as…

    Diane seizes an opportunity with Jack. And if the she-devil is so much as seeing an opportunity with Jack, it can only mean that he and Red are still very much on the outs. Maybe this would be a good time to remind him of the kind of chaos that Diane has been known to wreak. Our photo gallery of her tempestuous life story has all the gory details.

    Week of June 27:

    Monday, June 27:

    Is Billy about to ruin his relationship with Lily!

    Though Jack stands his ground with Phyllis, we have to believe that that ground is still pretty shaky. Just scroll through our “Phack” photo album to recall all the times that the couple has said they were really, truly done… only to pick up the pieces and start over anew.

    Please don’t tell us the honeymoon’s over already. When Tessa faces an unexpected crisis, will it mean that trouble’s afoot in her marriage to bride Mariah?

    No one could blame Nick if he needed a little time-out from Genoa City and his family.

    Tuesday, June 28:

    If there’s one thing we learned long ago, it’s that Victor will always have the last word… whether literally or metaphorically. So it should come as no surprise that he’s about to reveal a whole new game plan. The only question is against whom is he plotting? (Although even that is likely rhetorical, given how he feels about son-in-law Ashland!)

    Perhaps sensing that Billy is feeling a bit at loose ends ever since the Chancellor-Winters merger, Lily recommends that her beau take things in a new direction.

    Adam’s been on the losing side of too many battles in his life. So it’s not particularly shocking that when he and Sally score a victory, they want to celebrate. (Something tells us they’ll do so on top of a piece of office furniture… )

    Wednesday, June 29:

    When opportunity knocks, one is supposed to open the door. But it appears Chelsea is going to sit back and think about it before she decides whether or not to dive in.

    When Nate needs a favor, he turns to Imani. And given how she clearly feels about the hunk, it seems pretty doubtful she’ll be turning him down, no matter what his request might be!

    Ugh. Come on, Jack, we’re going to need you to be smarter than to fall for Diane’s ploys. But we fear that playing the sympathy card is all Kyle’s mom will have to do to bend Jack to her will.

    Thursday, June 30:

    As far as we’re concerned, Nikki needs absolutely no assistance when it comes to strategizing. But having an expert in the field in your corner never hurts, so she’s happy to let Victor help!

    Remember how just a few days ago, Nick was considering a change of scenery? Well, he may wish he had left town when, today, he’s put in the all-too familiar position of having his loyalty tested.

    We can’t help suspecting that Victor might be responsible when Victoria finds herself caught in a compromising position. Will this impact her relationship with Ashland?

    Friday, July 1:

    Victor does what might very well be his favorite thing in the world when he gives Adam an ultimatum. Will Adam do his father’s bidding… or perhaps draw a line in the sand?

    Things have been pretty tense between Chelsea and Chloe over the past few weeks, and the lid is about to blow right off the kettle as those tensions boil over.

    Will the shocking discovery that Ashland makes be something he can use to his favor, or will it drive a final nail into the coffin in which Victor would love to see his and Victoria’s marriage wind up?

  • The Bold and the Beautiful Weekly Spoilers: June 27-July 1, 2022

    June 25th, 2022

    Tantalizing hints about what happens after Quinn catches Eric in bed with Donna, whether any “I dos” go down at Carter and Paris’ wedding, and how Steffy and Finn reconnect despite the fact that they are continents apart.

    Friday, June 24:

    Quinn learns Carter will wed the next day, Hope recovers from a gaffe, Zende deals with Grace, and Carter confesses to Ridge that he’s in love with Quinn.

    Of course they do! Paris and Carter move up their wedding date amidst push-back from their loved ones. Because forging full-steam ahead is the logical thing to do when everyone’s urging you to slow your roll. Maybe it’s time to bring back [Spoiler]…

    With breathtakingly awful timing (he’s about to marry Paris!), Carter makes a stunning admission about his genuine love for Quinn to Ridge. What will the dressmaker have to say, given that the woman who holds his friend’s heart in her hands… is his stepmother?!

    Week of June 27:

    Monday, June 27:

    “Honey, I’m comin’ home!” Eric promises a bright future to an overjoyed Donna. The stumper is, when will he get around to letting Quinn in on his life-changing plans?

    Aaawkward! Quinn and Bridget learn a shocking truth about Eric’s pickleball “exercise.” We’re guessing they’ll be even more shocked than Hope to discover that the Forrester patriarch has not been hitting the courts but has instead been giving his ticker a different sort of workout whilst in bed with a buxom Logan — who just happens to be his ex-wife!

    Tuesday, June 28:

    When Donna was enthusing about the good news Eric gave her the other day, she might have paused to consider the possible ramifications… which are about to come a-knockin’ while the bed’s a-rockin’. Hide the breakable honey jars because all hell is bound to break loose when Quinn and Bridget bust Eric and Donna in bed!

    As Carter and Paris’ wedding begins, Quinn grapples with having lost her two true loves. Will it occur to the heartbroken (and probably furious) brunette to make her way to the big event to try and stop Carter from marrying his second choice? We sure hope so!

    Wednesday, June 29:

    Surrounded by loved ones, the wedding of Paris Buckingham and Carter Walton begins. But will it go off “with” a hitch?! Heaven knows Quinn’s gears will be turning, what with just having discovered her “loyal” hubby in bed with his ex-wife! Will she make a beeline to the big event?

    Yup, she will! However, Quinn’s journey to reach Carter before it’s too late takes a comical turn. Will she be able to get to the church (or the Forrester living room as the case may be) on time and stop her former lover from tying the knot with his near-Mrs.?!

    Thursday, June 30:

    An elated Donna shares her good news about Eric with Brooke. There’s no question that her sister will be absolutely thrilled, given how she feels about Quinn — although she might be disappointed that she wasn’t there to see the look on her nemesis’ face when she caught ol’ Honey Bear in the act!

    There’s nothing better than a wedding crasher on a soap! What will go down after Quinn’s startling admission stuns Carter and rattles Paris and Grace?! Will the usually upstanding COO follow through on the pledge he made to his fiancée or gift Mama Buckingham with an “I told you so” moment that will validate the considerable concerns she’s been very vocally expressing all along?

    Friday, July 1:

    Partners in crime once again! Mike can’t resist Sheila’s request to help with Finn as they reflect on some of their best moments together. What a hair-raising trip through time that’s bound to be!

    OK, we can’t wait to see what the outcome is as Paris, Carter and Quinn reach an unexpected ending to an emotional day. “Unexpected” can mean a lot of things. It was expected that Carter would marry Paris, so does he not? Will he declare that he wants Quinn, or will Paris pull a runaway bride after realizing she’s not the woman in the room that her groom truly loves?! Heck, maybe Grace will drag Zende up to the altar and strong-arm her daughter into marrying him instead!

    Week of July 4:

    Monday, July 4:

    Overseas, Steffy gets sentimental as she remembers loving memories with Finn, and we can’t help but wonder if she’ll pull up our photo album of “Sinn’s” love story so as to look back on their entire romantic journey.

    So deep! Finn and Steffy share a cosmic connection as Sheila fights to save her son’s life. Will the grieving widow begin to sense on some level that her husband isn’t really gone?! Maybe it will dawn on her that he’s still got a pulse.

  • General Hospital Weekly Spoilers: June 27-July 1, 2022

    June 25th, 2022

    The ABC soap celebrates its 15,000th episode — and someone takes aim at Laura! Plus, Brad isn’t honest with his BFF Britt, an unexpected event leads to a revelation, Olivia takes on Nina and Sasha and a new connection of Cody’s is revealed, which surprises Sam and Dante…

    Week of June 20:

    Monday, June 20:

    Spencer asks Victor to help him find Esme’s parents, Kevin is furious to learn Esme’s been seeing Ryan, and Alexis warns Laura of a catastrophe to come.

    Esme thinks that perhaps Kevin can provide her a little bit of insight. (Wonder how he’d feel to know that he’s actually offering advice to his psycho brother’s daughter?) Meanwhile, Spencer, too, seeks advice, but he winds up turning to Uncle Victor for help.

    Mac is going to lose his cool when he finds out what Felicia’s been up to… and with good reason!

    Remember when Martin and Laura were being targeted by someone while they were away from Port Charles? Cyrus swore he wasn’t responsible, but was he telling the truth? The discussion Laura and Martin have today may shed more light on the situation…

    A whole lot of people have reason to be worried about Trina, and they compare notes today.

    As Anna and Valentin’s first date continues, he opens up a bit. But how will she feel about what he confesses?

    Far wiser than Spencer, Nicholas Alexander Chavez sets poetry in motion “if anyone should need it.”

    Tuesday, June 21:

    Due to ongoing news, the soap was pre-empted today and will air the 15,000th episode tomorrow.

    Wednesday, June 22:

    In a special episode celebrating 15,000 episodes, Laura faces a recall vote looking to replace her as the mayor of Port Charles.

    You know how some primetime shows make a big deal about reaching their 100th episode? Well, today General Hospital is going to be airing its 15,000th. Appropriately enough, the episode will focus on much-loved Port Charles Mayor Laura Collins as some unknown adversary takes aim at her.

    Thursday, June 23:

    Due to ongoing news, the soap was pre-empted today and will air Thursday’s episode tomorrow.

    “The super couple we’ve been waiting for…” As he goes for the gold, James Patrick Stuart receives such a show of support that he’s left gratefully asking, “Who needs Emmys?”

    Friday, June 24:

    ELQ holds a vote on whether to oust Valentin or not, Carly shocks Olivia by how she was able to buy so much of Aurora’s stock, and Cody finds a reason to stay in Port Charles.

    Control of ELQ could be decided as the board gathers for an important meeting. Meanwhile, Carly tells Olivia — aka her partner at the Metro Court — all about her latest business maneuver.

    Is Chase right to be worried about what the future holds for him where the PCPD is concerned? On the plus side, at least he’s talking about his feelings with Brook Lynn.

    Britt has been ticked with Brad ever since he turned her poolside rant into a viral sensation. Will his attempt to make peace be hampered by the fact that he’s not being totally honest?

    Dante and Cody wind up discussing the past after Sam’s beau asks the newbie what happened to him.

    Week of June 27:

    Monday, June 27:

    Things could get a bit messy — and potentially loud — when Olivia has it out with Nina and Sasha. Something tells us throwing Willow into the combustible mix isn’t likely to help matters!

    Sonny wants Brando and Dex to put aside their differences and start getting along. Yeah, good luck with that one, boss man!

    Drew makes it clear exactly where he stands with Valentin.

    Carly has reason to celebrate, and who better to do that with than Josslyn and Bobbie?

    When Chase finally gets word, Brook Lynn’s the person he most wants to share it with.

    Tuesday, June 28:

    If there’s one thing we know, it’s that bathing suits aren’t the only revealing things at the Metro Court pool. That proves true today when something unexpected leads to a bit of info coming to light.

    Michael’s making plans for his next move against Sonny… and you’ll never guess who overhears!

    Nina and Obrecht discuss their love lives.

    Anna wants to know more about Valentin’s relationship with and loyalty to newfound dad Victor.

    As Epiphany prepares for one of the biggest days of her life, TJ is right there in her corner.

    Wednesday, June 29:

    It turns out that Cody’s just full of surprises. Dante and Sam find that out when they discover he has a connection they never suspected.

    Spencer hopes that Brad will be able to lend him a helping hand. Britt, however, thinks that’s a bad idea all around! Meanwhile, Esme apparently can’t help but want the attention of any guy who likes Trina, explaining why she begins flirting with Rory at the pool!Trina, meanwhile, is surrounded by her support system as she prepares for the beginning of her trial. Will she finally be able to clear her name?

    Ex-lovers Michael and Sasha reconnect.

    Thursday, June 30:

    It ain’t easy being the Face of Deception, especially given all of the other stresses Sasha’s been under of late. As she prepares for her big TV appearance on the company’s behalf, will Felty’s arrival prove helpful… or disastrous?

    When Chase is in need of a little advice, his dad and brother are there to provide it.

    Is the end of Trina’s nightmare finally in sight? It could be, if Spencer’s right in what he tells Cameron. Meanwhile, Esme’s on high alert after coming across Scott taking a meeting with Ava and Nikolas.

    Brook Lynn hopes that Sonny will come to her assistance.

    Friday, July 1:

    Who doesn’t like a good proposition? When Drew approaches Nina with one, will she accept? (And no, Sonny doesn’t have to worry… this is a business proposal!) Meanwhile, when Carly crosses paths with Sonny, she does her best to be evasive. Will he figure out what she’s trying to keep from him?

    Spencer and Cameron’s attempt to help Trina gets underway… only to rather quickly go awry! Things also don’t go at all as planned when the Deception crew arrives for Sasha’s appearance on the Home & Heart Channel!

    Cody’s having a nice evening with Dante and Rocco… until the newcomer catches a glimpse of Spinelli? Now why does that bother him so?

  • Days of Our Lives Weekly Spoilers: June 27-July 1, 2022

    June 25th, 2022

    Sami walks in on a steamy moment between EJ and Belle, as Brady and Chloe catch Shawn and Jan kissing! Plus, Marlena tries to pull a fast one, which sets off Abe and Paulina, a life-changing gift arrives for Ben and Ciara from Hope, and someone pulls a knife on Chanel!

    Week of June 27:

    Monday, June 27:

    Sami serves EJ divorce papers, but she’s the one about to have her world rocked. Watch the preview!

    It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for as Sami walks in at exactly the wrong moment (or right, depending on your point of view) and finds Belle and EJ sharing a steamy moment.

    Rafe can’t help but wonder if perhaps his bride-to-be is getting cold feet. Is she considering ditching their upcoming wedding… or perhaps doing a last-minute groom swap? Meanwhile, Roman suggests to Eric that it’s not too late to make a last-minute plea for Nicole to change her mind.

    As Chad continues to grieve the loss of his beloved wife, John and Marlena do what they can to support him.

    Tuesday, June 28:

    Everything is about to change for Ben and Ciara thanks to a special gift they receive from her mom, Hope.

    You know that notoriously fine line between love and hate? It sounds as if EJ and Belle are pretty much existing on it as they antagonize one another.

    Lucas and Sami celebrate their engagement. But they might want to hold off popping the bubbly, given the truth waiting to explode!

    Evan gets a bit of surprising news from his dad, Orpheus.

    Wednesday, June 29:

    Brady and Chloe walk in to see… wait, this can’t be right, can it? Shawn is kissing… Jan? And without her having received any help from the devil? What the H-E-Double-Hockey Sticks is going on here?!?

    There are certain things you can never come back from. Is what Belle and EJ just did one of them?

    Abigail’s brother, JJ, is back in Salem as he joins Chad in trying to figure out how they will move on without Abigail. Meanwhile, Jack and Jennifer need one another more than ever as they deal with an extremely difficult task.

    Thursday, June 30:

    If Melinda thinks she can pull a fast one on Abe and Paulina, she might want to think again. Why? Because the two of them are having absolutely none of it!

    Lani’s fate is about to be decided… and you won’t believe who swings by for a surprise visit. Meanwhile, Doug helps Julie handle the twins.

    Chanel’s love life is the very definition of complicated. Will Theo’s advice help her figure things out?

    Friday, July 1:

    What Julie finds out from Eli today will absolutely shock her. But what will she do next?

    As Lani’s loved ones gather around her at a crucial moment, she is absolutely blown away by what Abe does.

    Proving yet again that things aren’t completely right with Sarah, she winds up pulling a knife on Chanel!

  • History of Roe v. Wade Part III

    June 24th, 2022

    Judge Edith Jones In 2002, along with Sandra Cano (Mary Doe) from Doe v. Bolton and Bernard Nathanson, a co-founder of NARAL Pro-Choice America, McCorvey appeared in a television advertisement intended to get the Bush administration to nominate members to the Supreme Court who would oppose abortion. As a party to the original litigation, she sought to reopen the case in U.S. District Court in Texas to have Roe v. Wade overturned. However, the Fifth Circuit decided that her case was moot, in McCorvey v. Hill. In a concurring opinion, Judge Edith Jones agreed that McCorvey was raising legitimate questions about emotional and other harm suffered by women who have had abortions, about increased resources available for the care of unwanted children, and about new scientific understanding of fetal development. However, Jones said she was compelled to agree that the case was moot. On February 22, 2005, the Supreme Court refused to grant a writ of certiorari, and McCorvey’s appeal ended. In an interview shortly before her death, McCorvey stated that she had taken an anti-abortion position because she had been paid to do so and that her campaign against abortion had been an act. She also stated that it did not matter to her if women wanted to have an abortion and they should be free to choose. Rob Schenck, a Methodist pastor and activist who once had anti-abortion views stated that he and others helped entice McCorvey to claim she changed sides and also stated that what they had done with her was “highly unethical” and he had “profound regret” over the matter. Frank Pavone, a priest with whom McCorvey talked to after the interview, reflected after her death that “There was no indication whatsoever, at the end of her life” that she had given up her pro-life positions. Pavone stated that following the interview, McCorvey talked positively with him about a message she wanted him to convey at the next March for Life. The message concerned encouraging young people to oppose abortion. McCorvey’s third child In 2021, Shelley Thornton, McCorvey’s third child, who was not aborted as a fetus because the court proceedings took too long, stated she was neither pro-life nor pro-choice. She grew up not knowing that she was the fetus in the Roe case until her birth mother appeared on the Today show in 1989 and talked about her desire to meet her daughter. In response, a journalist for the National Enquirer found Thornton as a teenager and told her about her prenatal history. This made her very sad. In 1991, Thornton became pregnant and did not have an abortion because abortion was “not part of who I was”. By 2021, she had met her two half-siblings, but not her birth mother. She nearly met her birth mother in 1994, but on the phone McCorvey told her that she should have thanked her for not having an abortion. Thornton’s visceral reaction was “What! I’m supposed to thank you for getting knocked up … and then giving me away?” She told her birth mother that she “would never, ever thank her for not aborting me”. She reflected that “When someone’s pregnant with a baby, and they don’t want that baby, that person develops knowing they’re not wanted.” Sarah Weddington After arguing in Roe v. Wade at the age of 26, Sarah Weddington was elected to the Texas House of Representatives for three terms. Weddington also was general counsel for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an assistant to President Jimmy Carter, lecturer at the Texas Wesleyan University School of Law, and speaker and adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin. In a 1993 speech for the Institute for Educational Ethics in Oklahoma, Weddington discussed her conduct during Roe and stated, “My conduct may not have been totally ethical. But I did it for what I thought were good reasons.” In 1998, she said that the lack of doctors to abort fetuses could undermine Roe: “When I look back on the decision, I thought these words had been written in granite. But I’ve learned it was not granite. It was more like sandstone. The immediate problem is, where will the doctors come from?” Weddington died on December 26, 2021. Subsequent judicial developments Roe is embedded in a long line of cases concerning personal liberty in the realm of privacy, since Roe was based on individual liberty cases concerning privacy like Meyer v. Nebraska (1923), Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), Loving v. Virginia (1967) and Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) and became a foundation for individual liberty cases concerning privacy like Lawrence v. Texas (2003) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). Two months after the decision in Roe, the Court issued a ruling about school funding in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. The majority opinion cited Roe v. Wade to assert that privacy itself was a fundamental right, while procreation implicitly counted as “among the rights of personal privacy protected under the Constitution.” In his dissenting opinion, Justice Thurgood Marshall stated that Roe v. Wade “reaffirmed its initial decision in Buck v. Bell”, and noted where Buck was cited in Roe. He found Roe to be a continuation of the Court’s practice of granting only a limited stature to the right to procreate, since the Court’s decision treated procreation as less important than the right to privacy. He observed that although past decisions showed strong concern against the state discriminating against certain groups concerning procreation and certain other rights, the “Court has never said or indicated that these are interests which independently enjoy full-blown constitutional protection.” Instead, in Roe, “the importance of procreation has indeed been explained on the basis of its intimate relationship with the constitutional right of privacy …” Justice Marshall thought that the method used in Rodriguez for determining which rights were more fundamental was wrong, and proposed a different method which would result in procreation receiving greater legal protection. The legal interaction between Roe v Wade, the Fourteenth Amendment as understood post-Roe, and changing medical technology and standards caused the development of civil suits for wrongful birth and wrongful life claims. Not all states permit a parent to sue for wrongful birth or a child to sue for wrongful life. The constitutionality of wrongful life claims is controversial within the legal profession, even for states which currently allow them. Pre-Roe, a state court dismissed a lawsuit making both a wrongful birth and life claim, which was unsuccessfully appealed to the Supreme Court of New Jersey. Prior to Roe, the Chancery Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey found that a pregnant Jehovah’s Witness woman could be ordered to submit to lifesaving blood transfusions due to the state’s compelling interest “to save her life and the life of her unborn child.” The Court appointed a legal guardian to represent the unborn child, and ordered the guardian to consent to blood transfusions and to “seek such other relief as may be necessary to preserve the lives of the mother and the child”. After Roe, the Fifth District Appellate Court in Illinois ruled that medical professionals had wrongly transfused blood into a pregnant Jehovah’s Witness woman on the basis from Roe that the “state’s important and legitimate interest becomes compelling at viability” and her fetus was not yet viable. President Reagan, who supported legislative restrictions on abortion, began making federal judicial appointments in 1981. Reagan denied that there was any litmus test: “I have never given a litmus test to anyone that I have appointed to the bench … . I feel very strongly about those social issues, but I also place my confidence in the fact that the one thing that I do seek are judges that will interpret the law and not write the law. We’ve had too many examples in recent years of courts and judges legislating.” In addition to Justices White and Rehnquist, Reagan-appointee Justice Sandra Day O’Connor began dissenting from the Court’s abortion cases, arguing in 1983 that the trimester-based analysis devised by the Roe Court was “unworkable.” Shortly before his retirement, Chief Justice Warren Burger suggested in 1986 that Roe be “reexamined”; the associate justice who filled Burger’s place on the Court—Justice Antonin Scalia—vigorously opposed Roe. Concern about overturning Roe played a major role in the defeat of Robert Bork’s nomination to the Court in 1987; the man eventually appointed to replace Roe-supporter Justice Lewis Powell was Justice Anthony Kennedy. The justices voting in the majority on the Federal Constitutional Court in pre-unification West Germany rejected the trimester framework in the German Constitutional Court abortion decision, 1975 on the basis that development during pregnancy is a continuous whole rather than made up of three trimesters. The Court found that the right to life extends also to the unborn and that life begins on the fourteenth day after conception. It also found that the liberties of pregnant mothers were qualified by the existence of another life inside them. The Court found that “A compromise which guarantees the protection of the life of the one about to be born and permits the pregnant woman the freedom of abortion is not possible since the interruption of pregnancy always means the destruction of the unborn life.” It ruled that the fetus must be protected, and the first responsibility for this lies with the mother, with a second responsibility in the hands of the legislature. The Court allowed for a balancing of rights between the mother and unborn child, but required that the rights of each be considered within a framework which acknowledged the supreme, fundamental value of human life. Legislation allowing abortion could be constitutional if the rights of the unborn persons were acknowledged in this manner. Two minority justices in the ruling for the German Constitutional Court abortion decision in 1975 remarked that “the Supreme Court of the United States has even regarded punishment for the interruption of pregnancy, performed by a physician with the consent of the pregnant woman in the first third of pregnancy, as a violation of fundamental rights. This would, according to German constitutional law, go too far indeed.” In 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada used the rulings in both Roe and Doe v. Bolton as grounds to find Canada’s federal law limiting abortions to certified hospitals unconstitutional in R. v. Morgentaler. Planned Parenthood v. Danforth In Planned Parenthood v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52 (1976), the plaintiffs challenged a Missouri statute which regulated abortion. In the regulations for abortions on demand, the state required prior written consent from a parent if the patient was a minor or a spouse if the patient was married. For pregnancies at 12 weeks and later, the statute also banned saline abortions, in which chemicals are injected into the amniotic sac to burn the fetus. The portions of the statute involving parental or spousal consent and prohibiting saline abortions were struck down. Floyd v. Anders In Floyd v. Anders, 440 F. Supp. 535 (D.S.C. 1977), South Carolina attempted to prosecute a doctor for illegal abortion and murder after he attempted to abort an African American boy at 25 weeks. During the abortion, the boy was born alive and survived for 20 days before dying. His prosecution was blocked by Judge Clement Haynsworth, and shortly afterwards by a unanimous three judge panel for the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. Judge Haynsworth, writing for the panel, stated “Indeed, the Supreme Court declared the fetus in the womb is neither alive nor a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.” John T. Noonan criticized this from an anti-abortion perspective, stating that “Judge Haynsworth had replaced the Supreme Court’s test of potential ability to live with a new test of actual ability to live indefinitely. He also had spelled out what was implied in Roe v. Wade but never actually stated there. For the American legal systems the fetus in the womb was not alive.” The standard in Roe for viability outside the womb required a “capability of meaningful life”. Without this capability, the state had no compelling “important and legitimate interest in potential life”. Webster v. Reproductive Health Services In a 5–4 decision in 1989’s Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the Court, declined to explicitly overrule Roe, because “none of the challenged provisions of the Missouri Act properly before us conflict with the Constitution.” In particular, the Court found that the ability to have a non-therapeutic abortion was not an affirmative right of the sort that required the state to pay for it. In this case, the Court upheld several abortion restrictions, and modified the Roe trimester framework. In concurring opinions, Justice O’Connor refused to reconsider Roe, and Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the Court and Justice O’Connor for not overruling Roe. Justice Blackmun stated in his dissent that Justices White, Kennedy and Rehnquist were “callous” and “deceptive,” that they deserved to be charged with “cowardice and illegitimacy,” and that their plurality opinion “foments disregard for the law.” White had recently opined that the majority reasoning in Roe v. Wade was “warped.” Planned Parenthood v. Casey During initial deliberations for Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), an initial majority of five justices (Rehnquist, White, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas) were willing to effectively overturn Roe. Justice Kennedy changed his mind after the initial conference, and Justices O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter joined Justices Blackmun and Stevens to reaffirm the central holding of Roe, but instead of justifying the liberty to abort as being based on privacy as in Roe, it justified the liberty in a broader manner. The opinion asserted an individual’s liberty to choose concerning family life and also protection from legal enforcement intended to maintain traditional sex roles, writing, “Our law affords constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education. …” and against the state insisting “upon its own vision of the woman’s role, however dominant that vision has been in the course of our history and our culture. The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society.” The plurality of justices stated that abortion-related legislation should be reviewed based on the undue burden standard instead of the strict scrutiny standard from Roe. The plurality also found that a fetus was now viable at 23 or 24 weeks rather than at the 28 week line from 1973. They also felt that fetal viability was “more workable” than the trimester framework. They abandoned the trimester framework due to two basic flaws: “in its formulation it misconceives the nature of the pregnant woman’s interest; and in practice it undervalues the State’s interest in potential life, as recognized in Roe.” Only Justice Blackmun wanted to retain Roe entirely and issue a decision completely in favor of Planned Parenthood. Prior to this, he had considered a Pennsylvania viability-based law to be unconstitutionally vague in his majority opinion for Colautti v. Franklin. Justice Scalia’s dissent asserted that abortion is not a liberty protected by the Constitution for the same reason bigamy was not protected either: because the Constitution does not mention it, and because longstanding traditions have permitted it to be legally proscribed. He also asked: Precisely why is it that, at the magical second when machines currently in use (though not necessarily available to the particular woman) are able to keep an unborn child alive apart from its mother, the creature is suddenly able (under our Constitution) to be protected by law, whereas before that magical second it was not? That makes no more sense than according infants legal protection only after the point when they can feed themselves. Stenberg v. Carhart During the 1990s, Nebraska enacted a law banning partial-birth abortion. The law allowed another second-trimester abortion procedure known as dilation and evacuation. In 2000, the Supreme Court struck down the law by a 5–4 vote in Stenberg v. Carhart, with Justice Stephen Breyer writing for the majority that sometimes partial-birth abortion “would be the safest procedure”. Justice O’Connor wrote a concurrence stating Nebraska was actually banning both abortion methods. Justices Ginsburg and Stevens joined each other’s concurrences. Justice Stevens stated that “the notion that either of these two equally gruesome procedures performed at this late stage of gestation is more akin to infanticide than the other … is simply irrational.” Justice Ginsburg stated that the “law does not save any fetus from destruction, for it targets only ‘a method of performing abortion’.” Justice Thomas’s dissent stated, “The ‘partial birth’ gives the fetus an autonomy which separates it from the right of the woman to choose treatments for her own body.” Justice Scalia joined Justice Thomas’s dissent and also wrote his own, stating that partial-birth abortion is “so horrible that the most clinical description of it evokes a shudder of revulsion” and that this case proved Casey was “unworkable”. Chief Justice Rehnquist joined the two dissents by Justices Scalia and Thomas. Justice Kennedy, who had co-authored Casey, dissented in Stenberg. He described in graphic detail exactly how a fetus dies while being dismembered during a dilation and evacuation procedure. He reasoned that since Nebraska was not seeking to prohibit it, the state was free to ban partial-birth abortion. Gonzales v. Carhart In 2003, Congress passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which led to a lawsuit in the case of Gonzales v. Carhart. The Court previously ruled in Stenberg v. Carhart that a state’s ban on partial-birth abortion was unconstitutional because such a ban did not have an exception for the health of the woman. The membership of the Court changed after Stenberg, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito replacing Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O’Connor. The ban at issue in Gonzales v. Carhart was similar to the one in Stenberg, but had been adjusted to comply with the Court’s ruling. On April 18, 2007, a 5 to 4 decision upheld the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion that Congress was within its power to ban partial-birth abortion. The Court left the door open for as-applied challenges. The opinion did not address whether Casey remained valid. Instead it only assumed Casey was valid “for the purposes of this opinion”. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito joined the majority. Justice Thomas filed a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Scalia, contending that the Court’s prior decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey should be reversed. They also noted that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act may have exceeded the powers of Congress under the Commerce Clause but that the question was not raised. Justice Ginsburg, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, and Breyer, dissented, contending that the ruling ignored precedent and that abortion rights should instead be justified by equality. Dubay v. Wells Dubay v. Wells was a 2006 paternity case where a man argued he should not have to pay child support for a child he did not want to parent. The case was billed as “Roe v. Wade for men”. On March 9, 2006, Dubay filed a lawsuit before the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. Michigan’s Attorney General, Joel D. McGormley, made a motion to have the case dismissed. On July 17, 2006, District Court Judge David Lawson agreed and dismissed Dubay’s lawsuit. He appealed it once, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which also dismissed it, and stated: Dubay’s claim that a man’s right to disclaim fatherhood would be analogous to a woman’s right to abortion rests upon a false analogy. In the case of a father seeking to opt out of fatherhood and thereby avoid child support obligations, the child is already in existence and the state therefore has an important interest in providing for his or her support. Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt In 2013, the Texas legislature enacted restrictions which required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital and required abortion clinics to have facilities equivalent to others which conducted outpatient surgery. On June 27, 2016, the Supreme Court in a 5–3 decision for Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt struck down these restrictions. The majority opinion by Justice Breyer struck down these two provisions of Texas law in a facial manner—that is, the very words of the provisions were invalid, no matter how they might be applied in any practical situation. The ruling also stated that the task of judging whether a law puts an undue burden on a woman’s right to abortion belongs with the courts and not the legislatures. Box v. Planned Parenthood In 2016, Indiana passed House Bill 1337, enacting a law which regulated what is done with fetal remains and banning abortion for sexist, racist, or ableist purposes. In its unsigned 2019 ruling for Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the regulations about fetal remains, but declined to hear the remainder of the law, which had been blocked by lower courts. Justice Ginsburg dissented from the part of the ruling about fetal remains on the basis that the regulations violated Casey. She also criticized Justice Thomas over his use of the word “mother” in his concurrance. Justice Sotomayor stated that she wished the Court would not have heard the case at all. Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion which expressed concern that the theory presented in Freakonomics echoed the views of the eugenics movement. He warned that “a constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race, sex, or disability of an unborn child, as Planned Parenthood advocates, would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement”. He predicted, “Although the Court declines to wade into these issues today, we cannot avoid them forever.” Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson In 2021, the state of Texas devised a legal workaround to Roe that allowed it to successfully outlaw abortion at six weeks of pregnancy despite the continued existence of Roe and Casey. In the Texas Heartbeat Act, the legislature created a novel enforcement mechanism that bars state officials from enforcing the statute and authorizes private individuals to sue anyone who performs or assists an illegal abortion. Because the Texas Heartbeat Act is enforced by private citizens rather than government officials, there are no state officials that abortion providers can sue to stop the enforcement of the law, and they cannot obtain judicial relief that will stop private lawsuits from being initiated against them. This has produced an end-run around Roe because the threat of private civil-enforcement lawsuits has forced abortion providers to comply with the Texas Heartbeat Act despite its incompatibility with the Supreme Court’s abortion pronouncements. Other states have copied this enforcement mechanism to sidestep Roe and immunize their anti-abortion statutes from judicial review. This maneuver has weakened Roe and undercut the federal judiciary’s ability to protect abortion rights from state legislation. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is a case that was a legal challenge to Mississippi’s 2018 Gestational Age Act, which had banned abortions after 15 weeks with exceptions only for medical emergencies or fetal abnormalities. Federal courts had enjoined the state from enforcing the law after the state’s only abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, filed suit immediately after passage; the federal courts stated that the law violated the previously established 24-week point of viability. Mississippi asked the Supreme Court to hear the case on June 15, 2020, and the Court certified the petition on May 17, 2021, limited to the question of “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional”. The Court chose not to take up two other questions that Mississippi wanted to bring before the Court. On May 2, 2022, Politico released a leaked first draft of a majority opinion written by Justice Alito, which had been circulated among the court in February 2022. Alito’s draft called the Roe decision “egregiously wrong from the start” and would allow states to decide on abortion restrictions, overturning Roe and Casey. The release of a draft opinion for a pending case is unprecedented in recent Supreme Court history. The document was not a final decision, and justices are able to change their votes. The document is thought to reflect both the justices’ preliminary voting and the outcome of the internal Court procedure for deciding who is assigned to write the majority opinion. A press release from the Supreme Court confirmed the leaked document’s authenticity, and Chief Justice Roberts in a statement described its release as a “betrayal of the confidences of the Court”. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 to uphold Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act and 5–4 to overrule Roe and Casey. Similar to the leaked draft opinion, the opinion of the court written by Justice Alito stated that Roe was “egregiously wrong from the start” and its reasoning “exceptionally weak”. It also stated that Roe has “enflamed debate and deepened division” and that overruling it would “return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives”. Role in politics Presidential positions Generally, presidential opinions following Roe have been split along major party lines. The decision was opposed by Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. President George H. W. Bush also opposed Roe, though he had supported abortion rights earlier in his career. President Richard Nixon appointed Justices Burger, Blackmun, and Powell who voted with the majority, and Justice Rehnquist who dissented. President Nixon did not publicly comment about Roe v. Wade. During his early career, President Jimmy Carter supported legalizing abortion in order to save the life of a woman or in the event of birth defects, or in other extreme circumstances. As president, he thought abortion was wrong, but stated that he “accepted my obligation to enforce the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling, and at the same time attempted in every way possible to minimize the number of abortions.” In 2012 he reflected, “I never have believed that Jesus Christ would approve of abortions and that was one of the problems I had when I was president having to uphold Roe v. Wade …” He urged the Democratic Party to take a position supporting pregnant mothers to minimize economic and social factors driving women to get abortions. He also wanted the party to take stand in favor of banning abortion except for those whose lives “are in danger or who are pregnant as a result of rape or incest.” Roe was supported by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. In 1981, then-Senator Joe Biden voted for a constitutional amendment allowing states to overturn Roe v. Wade, which he voted against the following year. In a 2007 memoir, Biden expressed an opinion that although he was “personally opposed to abortion” he did not have the “right to impose” his personal opposition onto others. In 2021, he described himself to reporters as “a strong supporter of Roe v. Wade”, and added, “And I under— I respect people who think that—who don’t support Roe v. Wade; I respect their views. I respect them—they—those who believe life begins at the moment of conception and all. I respect that. Don’t agree, but I respect that. I’m not going to impose that on people.” Federal bills or laws regarding Roe Federal bills, amendments, or laws regarding Roe include the Women’s Health Protection Act, Freedom of Choice Act, Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, Unborn Victims of Violence Act, Interstate Abortion Bill, No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1995, Sanctity of Human Life Act, Sanctity of Life Act, Hyde Amendment, Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, and the Baby Doe Law. Following the passage of the Texas Heartbeat Act and the Supreme Court’s acceptance of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, and the threat the case poses to Roe in the eyes of Roe supporters, Neal Kumar Katyal, a law professor and former acting solicitor general of the United States, said that instead of abortion regulation by the judicial branch, Congress could “codify the rights two generations have taken as part of American life”, and “nullify the threat to reproductive health posed by the Mississippi case.” Thomas Jipping of the Heritage Foundation wrote that the Women’s Health Protection Act is unconstitutional because it regulates how state legislatures regulate abortion and abortion services rather than directly regulating abortion at the federal level. Views that the WHPA is unconstitutional or should otherwise be opposed were expressed during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings in 2014. State laws regarding Roe At the state level there have been many laws about abortion. In the decade after Roe, most states passed laws protecting medical workers with a conscientious objection to abortion. Nine states which had legalized abortion or loosened abortion restrictions prior to Roe already had statutory protection for those who did not want to participate in or perform an abortion. As of 2011, forty-seven states and the District of Columbia had laws allowing certain people to decline to perform certain actions or provide information related to abortion or reproductive health. At the federal level, the Church Amendment of 1973 was proposed in order to protect private hospitals objecting to abortion from being deprived of funding. It first passed the Senate, 92-1, then a slightly modified version passed the House 372-1, and the final bill which contained it passed the Senate 94-0. Justice Blackmun supported this and other regulations protecting individual physicians and entire hospitals operated by religious denominations. Some states have passed laws to maintain the legality of abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Those states include California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, and Washington. Other states have enacted so-called trigger laws that would take effect in the event that Roe v. Wade is overturned, with the effect of outlawing abortions on the state level. Those states include Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota. Additionally, many states did not repeal pre-1973 statutes against abortion, and some of those statutes could again be in force if Roe were reversed. On April 16, 2012, Mississippi House Bill 1390 was signed into law. The law attempted to make abortion unfeasible without having to overturn Roe v. Wade. Judge Daniel Porter Jordan III of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi granted an injunction against the law on July 13, 2012. On April 15, 2013, he issued another injunction which only applied to a part of the law which required the individual performing the abortions to have hospital admitting privileges. On July 29, 2014, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the injunction against part of the law, with Judge Emilio M. Garza dissenting. The ruling especially relied on a case unrelated to Roe which was decided “nearly fifty years before the right to an abortion was found in the penumbras of the Constitution”. On February 18, 2015, Mississippi asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, but they declined to hear it on June 28, 2016. The Human Life Protection Act was signed by Alabama governor Kay Ivey on May 14, 2019 in hopes of challenging Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court. It includes exceptions for a serious health risk to the mother or a lethal fetal anomaly, but otherwise it will make abortion a felony for the abortion doctor if it goes into effect. Women subjected to an abortion will not be criminally culpable or civilly liable under the law. On October 29, 2019, Judge Myron Thompson for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama issued a preliminary injunction against the law. In May 2021, Texas lawmakers passed Senate Bill 8, creating the Texas Heartbeat Act, banning abortions except in cases of medical emergency as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected. This is typically as early as six weeks into pregnancy and often before women know they are pregnant. The law established that any Texas resident who is not a state or local government employee or official can sue abortion clinics and doctors who are known to be “aiding and abetting” abortion procedures after six weeks. A clause forbids anyone who impregnated an abortion patient through rape, sexual assault, or incest to sue concerning the patient. The enactment date was September 1, 2021, and the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision, declined a request to block enforcement of the law that day. On October 22, 2021, the Court again did not block the law’s enforcement, and agreed to hear arguments for United States v. Texas (2021) later, on November 1, 2021. They limited the question to a review of standing. On December 10, 2021, the Court dismissed the lawsuit on the basis that lower courts should not have accepted it. This decision allows lawsuits against the executive directors of Texas’s medical, nursing, and pharmacy licensing boards and also against the executive commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, but not certain other lawsuits seeking to overturn the law. Demographic effects and opinion polls Roe v. Wade caused a 4.5% decline in births in states that had not previously legalized abortion. According to a 2019 study, if Roe v. Wade is reversed and some states prohibit abortion on demand, the increases in travel distance are estimated to prevent at a low estimate of over 90,000 women and at a high estimate of over 140,000 women from having abortions in the year following the ruling’s overturning. If Roe were to be overturned by a constitutional amendment which would apply to all the states, fertility could be expected to increase by 11% because then mothers would not travel to states where abortion is legal. Although the legalization of abortion in the United States increased the labor supply of fertile-aged women in the workforce, it decreased the labor supply of older women. This is thought to be due to the fact they now had fewer opportunities to financially support grandchildren. Older women whose labors became less necessary for the family’s financial wellbeing either left or stayed out of the workforce. The Donohue–Levitt hypothesis about the legalized abortion and crime effect proposed that legalized abortion was responsible for reductions in the crime rate. If there is a relationship between abortion and crime, there are several possibilities which could explain how abortion lowers crime. One possibility is that crime is disproportionally committed by young males, and legalizing abortion reduced the number of young males. Another possibility is that children born in the post-legalization era are less likely to commit crimes. If this is the case, it might be explained in two ways. One way is that the sort of women who have abortions are not representative of pregnant women as a whole; rather they are the sort who are most likely to give birth to children who grow up to be criminals. In this way, abortion serves to shape American family structure. Studies linking demographics to crime have found that children born to American teenagers, unmarried mothers, and mothers with lower incomes are more likely to engage in criminal activity as adolescents. Abortion rates are higher for these demographics. A second possible way to explain it is that women use abortion to prevent births until they are most able to provide a stable home environment. Factors involved in stability include the age, education, income, of the mother, her use of drugs and alcohol, the presence of a father, and wanted as opposed to unwanted pregnancies. Polls of Americans’ opinions about abortion indicate they are about equally divided. Organizations including Gallup, Pew, and Harris conduct abortion or Roe v. Wade related polls. Regarding the Roe decision as a whole, more Americans support it than support overturning it. When pollsters describe various regulations that Roe prevents legislatures from enacting, support for Roe drops. Poll results relating to abortion indicate nuance and frequently do not directly match up with respondents’ self-identified political affiliations. The Roe effect is a hypothesis explaining why the practice of abortion will eventually lead to abortion being restricted or outlawed. The hypothesis is that people in favor of abortion rights will not parent as many children when abortion is legal, and since children tend to have similar views to their parents eventually voters will not support abortion rights. In 2021, the ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 58% of those with children living at home wanted to see Roe v. Wade upheld, compared to 62% of those without children at home. The All In Together poll found that only 36% with children living in their house opposed the Texas Heartbeat Act, compared to 54.9% without children.

  • History of Roe v. Wade Part II

    June 24th, 2022

    Support for Roe

    In the 1960s, there was an alliance between the population control and abortion rights movements. Abortion rights were especially supported by younger women within the population control movement. Mostly the cooperation was due to feminists who wanted some of the popularity already enjoyed by the population control movement. In addition, population control advocates thought that legalizing abortion would help solve the coming population crisis which demographers had projected.

    In 1973, Hugh Moore’s Population Crisis Committee and John Rockefeller III’s Population Council both publicly supported abortion rights following Roe. Previously public support for abortion rights within the population control movement instead came from less established organizations such as Zero Population Growth. An exception was Planned Parenthood-World Population, which supported repealing all laws against abortion in 1969.

    Together, population control and abortion rights advocates voiced the benefits of legalized abortion such as smaller welfare costs, fewer illegitimate births, and slower population growth. At the same time, the use of these arguments put them at odds with civil rights leaders and black-power activists who were concerned that abortion would be used to eliminate non-whites. H. Rap Brown denounced abortion as “black genocide” and Dick Gregory said that his “answer to genocide, quite simply, is eight Black kids and another one on the way.”

    Soon after Roe, the population control movement suffered setbacks which caused the movement to lose political support and instead appear divisive. On June 27, 1973, a lawsuit was filed concerning 14-year old Minnie Lee Relf and her 12-year old sister Alice Lee. A worker at a federally funded family planning clinic lied to their illiterate mother, saying they would get birth control shots. Instead, the Relf sisters were sterilized without their knowledge or consent. During the next fifteen months, 80 additional women came forward about their forced sterilizations, all belonging to minority races. Concerns rose that abortions would also become compulsory. During the 1974 World Population Conference in Bucharest, Romania, most developing nations argued that the developed nations’ focus on population growth was an attempt to avoid solving the deeper causes of underdevelopment, such as the unequal structure of international relations. Instead, they wanted more favorable terms under the New International Economic Order. A draft plan with fertility targets was strongly opposed by the developing countries, which surprised the delegations from the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. The final plan omitted fertility targets and instead stated that “A population policy may have a certain success if it constitutes an integral part of socio-economic development”.

    In response, the abortion rights movement distanced itself from the population control movement as members questioned the political benefits of population control rhetoric. In October 1973, Robin Elliott circulated a memo to other Planned Parenthood members concerning opposition to “Planned Parenthood’s credibility in its reference to the population problem”. Instead, she thought they should use Roe inspired rhetoric about “the reaffirmation of commitment to freedom of choice in parenthood.” By 1978, a NARAL handbook denounced population control.

    Today, advocates of Roe describe it as vital to the preservation of women’s rights, personal freedom, bodily integrity, and privacy. Advocates have also reasoned that access to safe abortion and reproductive freedom generally are fundamental rights. Supporters of Roe contend that even if abortion rights are also supported by another portion of the constitution, the decision in 1973 accurately founds the right in the Fourteenth Amendment. Others support Roe despite concern that the fundamental right to abortion is found elsewhere in the Constitution but not in the portions referenced in the 1973 decision.

    Support for Roe, but opposition to legalized abortion

    Opinion polls in late 2021 indicated a sizable minority of the American population opposed overturning Roe, but also desired to make abortion illegal in ways that Roe would not permit. This was attributed to poll respondents misunderstanding Roe v. Wade or a misinterpreting of the poll question.

    Opposition to Roe

    Opposition to Roe, but support for abortion rights

    Some supporters of abortion rights oppose Roe v. Wade on the grounds that it laid a foundation for abortion in civil rights rather than in human rights, which are broader and would require government entities to take active measures to ensure every woman has access to abortion. This particular position is indicated by the use of rhetoric concerning “reproductive justice” which replaces earlier rhetoric centered around “choice”, such as the “pro-choice” label. Reproductive justice proponents contend that factors permitting choice are unequal, thus perpetuating oppression and serving to divide women.

    Reproductive justice advocates instead want abortion to be considered an affirmative right that the government would be obligated to guarantee equal access to, even if the women seeking abortions are nonwhite, poor, or live outside major metropolitan areas. With a broader interpretation of the right to an abortion, it would be possible to require all new obstetricians to be in favor of abortion rights, lest as professionals they employ conscience clauses and refuse to perform abortions. In the 1989 decision of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the Supreme Court ruled against an affirmative right to non-therapeutic abortions and noted that states would not be required to pay for them.

    Some in academia have equated the denial of abortion rights to compulsory motherhood, and reason that because of this abortion bans violate the Thirteenth Amendment:

    When women are compelled to carry and bear children, they are subjected to ‘involuntary servitude’ in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment. Even if the woman has stipulated to have consented to the risk of pregnancy, that does not permit the state to force her to remain pregnant.

    In 1993, a district court rejected an attempt to justify abortion rights apart from Roe and instead upon the basis that pregnancy and childrearing constituted “involuntary servitude”.

    Opposition to both Roe and abortion

    Every year, on the anniversary of the decision, opponents of abortion march up Constitution Avenue to the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., in the March for Life. Around 250,000 people attended the march until 2010. Estimates put the 2011 and 2012 attendances at 400,000 each, and the 2013 March for Life drew an estimated 650,000 people.

    Opponents of Roe assert that the decision lacks a valid constitutional foundation. Like the dissenters in Roe, they maintain that the Constitution is silent on the issue, and that proper solutions to the question would best be found via state legislatures and the legislative process, rather than through an all-encompassing ruling from the Supreme Court.

    A prominent argument against the Roe decision is that, in the absence of consensus about when meaningful life begins, it is best to avoid the risk of doing harm.

    In response to Roe v. Wade, most states enacted or attempted to enact laws limiting or regulating abortion, such as laws requiring parental consent or parental notification for minors to obtain abortions; spousal mutual consent laws; spousal notification laws; laws requiring abortions to be performed in hospitals, not clinics; laws barring state funding for abortions; laws banning intact dilation and extraction, also known as partial-birth abortion; laws requiring waiting periods before abortions; and laws mandating that women read certain types of literature and watch a fetal ultrasound before undergoing an abortion. In 1976, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, barring the federal government from using Medicaid to fund abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or a threat to the life of the mother. The Supreme Court struck down some state restrictions in a long series of cases stretching from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, but upheld restrictions on funding, including the Hyde Amendment, in the case of Harris v. McRae (1980).

    Some opponents of abortion maintain that person-hood begins at fertilization or conception, and should therefore be protected by the Constitution; the dissenting justices in Roe instead wrote that decisions about abortion “should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs.”

    Responses within the legal profession

    Liberal and feminist legal scholars have had various reactions to Roe, not always giving the decision unqualified support. One argument is that Justice Blackmun reached the correct result but went about it the wrong way. Another is that the end achieved by Roe does not justify its means of judicial fiat.

    David Garrow noted that the decision in Roe (and also Doe v. Bolton) “owed a great amount of their substance and language” to Justice Blackmun’s law clerks, George Frampton and Randall Bezanson. He thought the extent of their contributions were remarkable, and that the clerks exhibited an “unusually assertive and forceful manner” in voicing their views to Justice Blackmun. In his research it was the earliest significant example he found of this behavior pattern, which grew more consistent later on. In Garrow’s evaluation, the clerks’ contributions were “historically significant and perhaps decisive” in shaping the two decisions.

    In response to Garrow, Edward Lazarus noted that Justice Blackmun’s later clerks like himself did not need as much direction on reproductive rights since they had Justice Blackmun’s prior opinions to draw from. Lazarus thought that on at least some occasions when legal formulations were created for opinions to be published in Justice Blackmun’s name, the justice himself was not engaged in originating every significant thought pattern that they employed. Lazarus agreed that Garrow’s depiction of how the trimester framework came about was an example of one of these occasions. He concluded:

    The problem of excessive clerk delegation was less serious in Blackmun’s chambers than Garrow suggests but is also more commonplace among the justices. The modern Supreme Court has deep problems in its decisional culture and the overuse of law clerks is an aspect of this.

    Justice John Paul Stevens, while agreeing with the decision, has suggested that it should have been more narrowly focused on the issue of privacy. According to Stevens, if the decision had avoided the trimester framework and simply stated that the right to privacy included a right to choose abortion, “it might have been much more acceptable” from a legal standpoint. Before joining the Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticized the decision for venturing “too far in the change it ordered.” Had the decision been limited in scope to only permit abortion during certain circumstances, “physicians might have been less pleased with the decision, but the legislative trend might have continued in the direction in which it was headed”. After becoming a Supreme Court justice, Ginsburg faulted the Court’s approach for being “about a doctor’s freedom to practice his profession as he thinks best … It wasn’t woman-centered. It was physician-centered.” Justice Ginsburg thought that Roe was originally intended to complement Medicaid funding for abortions, but this did not happen. She stated about Harris v. McRae, which upheld restrictions on Medicaid abortion funding:

    Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

    Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox thought the “failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations whose validity is good enough this week but will be destroyed with new statistics upon the medical risks of child birth and abortion or new advances in providing for the separate existence of a fetus. Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution.”

    In a highly cited Yale Law Journal article published in the months after the decision, the American legal scholar John Hart Ely strongly criticized Roe as a decision that was disconnected from American constitutional law.

    What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure. … The problem with Roe is not so much that it bungles the question it sets itself, but rather that it sets itself a question the Constitution has not made the Court’s business. … [Roe] is bad because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.

    American constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe had similar thoughts: “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” Liberal law professors Alan Dershowitz, Cass Sunstein, and Kermit Roosevelt III have also expressed disappointment with Roe v. Wade.

    Jeffrey Rosen and Michael Kinsley echo Ginsburg, arguing that a legislative movement would have been the correct way to build a more durable consensus in support of abortion rights. William Saletan wrote, “Blackmun’s papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference.” Benjamin Wittes has written that Roe “disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply.” Edward Lazarus, a former Blackmun clerk who “loved Roe’s author like a grandfather”, wrote: “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. … Justice Blackmun’s opinion provides essentially no reasoning in support of its holding. And in the almost 30 years since Roe’s announcement, no one has produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms.”

    Richard Epstein thought that the majority opinion relied on a book written by William Lloyd Prosser about tort law when it stated, that it “is said” that recovery of damages was allowed “only if the fetus was viable, or at least quick, when the injuries were sustained”. He compared this to what was actually written in the book, which was that “when actually faced with the issue for decision, almost all of the jurisdictions have allowed recovery even though the injury occurred during the early weeks of pregnancy, when the child was neither viable nor quick.”

    The assertion that the Supreme Court was making a legislative decision is often repeated by opponents of the ruling. The “viability” criterion is still in effect, although the point of viability has changed as medical science has found ways to help premature babies survive.

    Later responses by those involved

    Harry Blackmun

    Justice Blackmun, who authored the Roe decision, subsequently had mixed feelings about his role in the case. During a 1974 television interview, he stated that Roe “will be regarded as one of the worst mistakes in the court’s history or one of its great decisions, a turning point.”

    In a 1983 interview for a newspaper journalist, he responded that he was “mildly annoyed at those, law professors included, who personalize it” because “it was a decision of the court, not my decision. There were seven votes.” As a Methodist, he felt hurt that Methodist pastors wrote condemning letters to him, but as time passed, the letters did not hurt “as much anymore”. In defense he responded, “People misunderstand. I am not for abortion. I hope my family never has to face such a decision”, noting that “I still think it was a correct decision” because “we were deciding a constitutional issue, not a moral one.”

    He described Roe as “a no-win case” and predicted that, “fifty years from now, depending on the fate of the proposed constitutional amendment, abortion probably will not be as great a legal issue. I think it will continue to be a moral issue, however.” He reflected that his role in the decision meant he was most known as the “author of the abortion decision”. His response was that “we all pick up tags. I’ll carry this one to my grave” and “so be it”.

    In 1987, Justice Blackmun explained in a letter to Chief Justice Rehnquist:

    I remember that the old Chief appointed a screening committee, chaired by Potter, to select those cases that could (it was assumed) be adequately heard by a Court of seven. I was on that little committee. We did not do a good job. Potter pressed for Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton to be heard and did so in the misapprehension that they involved nothing more than an application of Younger v. Harris. How wrong we were.

    In 1991, he regretted how the Court decided to hear Roe and Doe in a televised interview: “It was a serious mistake … We did a poor job. I think the committee should have deferred them until we had a full Court.”

    In 1992, he stood by the analytical framework he established in Roe during the subsequent Casey case. He often gave speeches and lectures promoting Roe v. Wade and criticizing Roe’s critics.

    Norma McCorvey

    Norma McCorvey would later claim that, during the 1970s although some years after Roe, she had a nightmare concerning “little babies lying around with daggers in their hearts”. This was the first of a series of recurring nightmares which kept her awake at night. She became worried and wondered, “What really, had I done?” and “Well, how do they kill a baby inside a mother’s stomach anyway?” McCorvey later reflected:

    I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind. I realize it sounds very naïve, especially for a woman who had already conceived and delivered three children. Though I had seen and experienced more than my share of the world, there were some things about which I still didn’t have a clue—and this was one of them. Ironically enough, Jane Roe may have known less about abortion than anyone else.

    During the years after Roe, although not immediately, McCorvey joined with and accompanied others in the abortion rights movement. During this time, McCorvey stated that she had publicly lied about being raped and apologized for making the false rape claim. Norma McCorvey became part of the movement against abortion from 1995 until shortly before her death in 2017. In 1998, she testified to Congress:

    It was my pseudonym, Jane Roe, which had been used to create the “right” to abortion out of legal thin air. But Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee never told me that what I was signing would allow women to come up to me 15, 20 years later and say, “Thank you for allowing me to have my five or six abortions. Without you, it wouldn’t have been possible.” Sarah never mentioned women using abortions as a form of birth control. We talked about truly desperate and needy women, not women already wearing maternity clothes.

  • History of Roe v. Wade Part I

    June 24th, 2022

    Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion. The decision, which struck down many U.S. federal and state abortion laws, fueled an ongoing debate in the United States about whether, or to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, and what the role of moral and religious views in the political sphere should be. It also shaped debate concerning which methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication. The case was brought by Norma McCorvey—known by the legal pseudonym “Jane Roe”—who in 1969 became pregnant with her third child. McCorvey wanted an abortion but lived in Texas, where abortion was illegal except when necessary to save the mother’s life. Her attorneys, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, filed a lawsuit on her behalf in U.S. federal court against her local district attorney, Henry Wade, alleging that Texas’s abortion laws were unconstitutional. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled in her favor and declared the relevant Texas abortion statutes unconstitutional. The parties appealed this ruling to the Supreme Court of the United States. On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision holding that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides a fundamental “right to privacy”, which protects a pregnant woman’s right to an abortion. But the Court also held that the right to abortion is not absolute and must be balanced against the government’s interests in protecting women’s health and prenatal life. The Court resolved these competing interests by announcing a trimester timetable to govern all abortion regulations in the United States. During the first trimester, governments could not regulate abortion at all, except to require that abortions be performed by a licensed physician. During the second trimester, governments could regulate the abortion procedure, but only for the purpose of protecting maternal health and not for protecting fetal life. After viability (which includes the third trimester of pregnancy and the last few weeks of the second trimester), abortions could be regulated and even prohibited, but only if the laws provided exceptions for abortions necessary to save the “life” or “health” of the mother. The Court also classified the right to abortion as “fundamental”, which required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the “strict scrutiny” standard, the most stringent level of judicial review in the United States. The Supreme Court’s decision in Roe was among the most controversial in U.S. history. Anti-abortion politicians and activists sought for decades to overrule the decision. Despite criticism of Roe, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its “central holding” in its 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey, although Casey overruled Roe’s trimester framework and abandoned Roe’s “strict scrutiny” standard in favor of a more malleable “undue burden” test. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Background History of abortion laws in the United States In 1821, Connecticut passed the first state statute banning abortion in the United States. In 1868, abortion was not legal before quickening in 27 out of all thirty-seven states. Altogether, 30 of the thirty-seven states and six of the ten U.S. territories had codified laws which restricted abortion along with the Kingdom of Hawai’i where abortion had once been common. Every state had abortion legislation by 1900. In the United States, abortion was sometimes considered a common law offense before specific statutes were made against it. In all states throughout the 19th and early 20th century, pre-quickening abortions were always considered to be actions without a lawful purpose. This meant that if the mother died, the individual performing the abortion was guilty of murder. This aspect of common law regarded pre-quickening abortions as a type of inchoate felony. Negative liberty rights from common law do not apply in situations caused by consensual or voluntary behavior, which allowed for abortions of fetuses conceived in a consensual manner to be common law offences. The majority opinion for Roe v. Wade authored in Justice Harry Blackmun’s name would later claim that the criminalization of abortion did not have “roots in the English common-law tradition”. One purpose for banning abortion was to preserve the life of the fetus, another was to protect the life of the mother, another was to create deterrence against future abortions, and another was avoid injuring the mother’s ability to have children. Judges did not always distinguish between which purpose was more important. Rather than arresting the women having the abortions, legal officials were more likely to interrogate them to obtain evidence against the individual doing the abortions. This law enforcement strategy was a response to juries which refused to convict women prosecuted for abortion in the 19th century. In 1973, Justice Harry Blackmun’s opinion stated that “the restrictive criminal abortion laws in effect in a majority of States today are of relatively recent vintage”. By 1971, elective abortion on demand was effectively available in Alaska, California, Washington, D.C., Washington state, Hawaii, and New York. Some women traveled to jurisdictions where it was legal, although not all could afford to. In 1971, Shirley Wheeler was charged with manslaughter after Florida hospital staff reported her illegal abortion to the police. Wheeler was one of few women who were prosecuted by their states for abortion. She received a sentence of two years probation and as an option under her probation, chose to move back into her parents’ house in North Carolina. The Playboy Foundation donated $3,500 to her defense fund and Playboy magazine denounced her prosecution. The Boston Women’s Abortion Coalition raised money and held a rally where attendees listened to speakers from the Women’s National Abortion Action Coalition (WONAAC). Her conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court of Florida. History of the case Sarah Weddington recruited Linda Coffee to help her with abortion litigation. Their first plaintiffs were a married couple; they joined after the woman heard Coffee give a speech. The intended suit would state abortions were medically necessary for the woman. The woman had a neurochemical disorder and it was considered medically necessary that she not give birth or raise children, yet they did not want to abstain from sex, and contraception might fail. The attorneys were concerned about standing since the woman was not pregnant. Weddington later wrote that they “needed to find a pregnant Texas woman who wanted an abortion and would be willing to be a plaintiff.” They also wanted to increase the likelihood that the panel selection would help them win in court. They wanted to present their case to three-judge panel which included a judge they thought would be sympathetic, which was only a possibility by filing a case in Dallas. If either of the two cases they filed in Dallas were assigned favorably, they intended to ask for the other one to be consolidated with it. Ordinarily, lawyers are not allowed to directly solicit clients without any prior relationship, but McCorvey’s situation qualified for an exception in the no solicitation rule which allows lawyers to solicit new clients for public interest cases. McCorvey, according to a sworn statement made in 2003, asked if she had what was needed to be part of the Weddington and Coffee’s lawsuit. She recounted being told, “Yes. You’re white. You’re young, pregnant, and you want an abortion.” Both McCorvey’s whiteness and her lower social class were crucial factors in the attorneys’ choice to have her as their plaintiff. McCorvey also recounted that the lawyers asked if she thought abortion should be legal. McCorvey said she did not know. Weddington told her, “It’s just a piece of tissue. You just missed your period.” This convinced McCorvey that abortion should be legal. She agreed to let them represent her under the impression that she would be able to eventually get a legal abortion. She smoked an illegal drug and drank wine so she would not have to think about her pregnancy. McCorvey gave birth to a daughter at Dallas Osteopathic Hospital on June 2, 1970; the baby was adopted by a couple in Texas. In 1970, Coffee and Weddington filed Roe v. Wade as a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on behalf of McCorvey under the legal pseudonym “Jane Roe”, and they also filed Does v. Wade on behalf of the married couple. The defendant for both cases was Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade, who represented the State of Texas. Weddington later stated that she “saw Roe as part of a much larger effort by many attorneys” whose collective interests she represented. James H. Hallford was a physician who was in the process of being prosecuted for performing two abortions. The Court allowed him to join the suit as a physician-intervenor on behalf of Jane Roe. One of the cases was assigned to a panel of judges which included Judge Sarah T. Hughes, who they thought would be sympathetic, and the cases were consolidated. In accordance with the Court’s rules, two of the judges hearing the consolidated case were assigned on the basis of their judicial district, and the third judge on the panel was a circuit court judge chosen by the appellate court’s Chief Justice. The consolidated lawsuit was heard by a three-judge panel consisting of district court judges Sarah T. Hughes and William McLaughlin Taylor Jr. and appellate judge Irving Loeb Goldberg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Hughes knew Coffee, who clerked for her from 1968–1969. Additionally, the backgrounds of two other judges also gave Weddington and Coffee hope they would be successful. On June 17, 1970, the three judges unanimously ruled in McCorvey’s favor and declared the Texas law unconstitutional, finding that it violated the right to privacy found in the Ninth Amendment. The court relied on Justice Arthur Goldberg’s 1965 concurrence in Griswold v. Connecticut. Yet the Court also declined to grant an injunction against enforcing the law, and ruled against the married couple on the basis that they lacked standing. Since Wade said he would continue to prosecute people for performing abortions, the lack of an injunction meant that McCorvey could not get an abortion. Hearing the case Postponement Roe v. Wade reached the Supreme Court when both sides appealed in 1970. The case continued under the name Roe v. Wade instead of being switched to Wade v. Roe. The justices delayed taking action on Roe and a closely related case, Doe v. Bolton, until they had first decided certain other cases. One case they decided first was Younger v. Harris. The justices felt the appeals raised difficult questions on judicial jurisdiction. Another case was United States v. Vuitch, in which they considered the constitutionality of a District of Columbia statute which banned abortion except when the mother’s life or health was endangered. The Court upheld the statute on the grounds that the word “health” was not unconstitutionally vague and placed the burden of proof concerning dangers to the life or health of the mother on the prosecutor instead of on the person who had performed the abortion. Justice William O. Douglas wrote a lengthy dissenting opinion to this case. He argued that the right to marital privacy and the limitation of family size from Griswold v. Connecticut also applied here, although he acknowledged that “on the other side is the belief of many that the fetus, once formed, is a member of the human family and that mere personal inconvenience cannot justify the fetus’ destruction.” He also challenged the majority opinion with a series of hypothetical questions asking whether “health” might also include the stigma of having an illegitimate child, anxiety from the pregnancy being unwanted, the physical work of raising a child, the financial drain from the added expense of another child, and far off health risks that may never actually materialize in a similar fashion to how risks were warded off with prophylactic appendectomy. Douglas’s dissent made a similar legal argument to the one used two years later in Roe v. Wade. The following day after their decision was announced, the court voted to hear both Roe and Doe. According to Blackmun, Stewart felt the cases were a straightforward application of Younger v. Harris, and enough justices agreed to hear the cases in order to review whether they would be suitable for federal as opposed to only state courts. This sort of review was not about the constitutionality of abortion and would not have required evidence, witnesses, or a record of facts. The oral argument was scheduled by the full Court for December 13, 1971. Before the Court could hear the oral argument, Justices Hugo Black and John Marshall Harlan II retired. Chief Justice Warren Burger asked Justice Potter Stewart and Justice Blackmun to determine whether Roe and Doe, among others, should be heard as scheduled. They recommended that the Court continue on as scheduled. Oral argument As she began speaking for the oral argument, Sarah Weddington was unaware that the Court had decided to hear the case in order to decide which courts had jurisdiction to hear it rather than as an attempt to overturn abortion laws in a broad ruling. She began by bringing up constitutional reasons why the Court should overturn Texas’s abortion law, but Justice Stewart asked questions directed towards the jurisdiction question instead. Weddington replied that she saw no problem with jurisdiction and continued to talk about a constitutional right to abortion. Overall, she spent between 20 and 30 minutes discussing jurisdiction and procedure instead of constitutional issues. In his opening argument in defense of the abortion restrictions, attorney Jay Floyd made what was later described as the “worst joke in legal history”. Appearing against two female lawyers, Floyd began, “Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the Court. It’s an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they are going to have the last word.” His remark was met with cold silence; one observer thought that Chief Justice Burger “was going to come right off the bench at him. He glared him down.” McCorvey did not attend either of the oral arguments along with her two lawyers. After talking McCorvey out of getting an illegal abortion and getting her name signed on an affidavit for the lawsuit, Weddington did not speak again with McCorvey until four months after Roe was decided. Initial discussions The judicial replacements After the first argument session, Burger assigned the task of writing the Court’s opinions for both Roe and Doe to Blackmun. Douglas suggested to Blackmun that Burger assigned the opinions to him out of malicious intention, but Blackmun disagreed. He knew that Burger could not write it himself because the abortion was too controversial, and his opinions might get rejected by the majority. He also understood why the other justices could not be assigned to write the opinions: Douglas was too liberal for the public to accept his word. Likewise, he might split the Court’s vote by writing something radical. In addition, the quality of his opinions had suffered recently. Brennan was the only Catholic on the Court, and he would have to face Catholic political groups which were against abortion. If Marshall wrote the opinions, the ruling would be perceived as being directed towards African Americans, and he would have to face the displeasure of African American political groups. Stewart would have trouble going far enough in legalizing abortion. At this point, Black and Harlan had been replaced by William Rehnquist and Lewis F. Powell Jr., but the first argument had already occurred before they became Supreme Court justices. Justice Blackmun worked on a preliminary opinion for Roe which argued that Texas’s law was unconstitutionally vague. This approach accommodated the claims of some doctors who were concerned that prosecutors might disagree with them over what constituted “life”. Blackmun thought this approach would be a good way to avoid controversy which would come with saying there was a fundamental right to abortion. Brennan and Douglas disagreed with Blackmun and wrote to him that instead he needed to focus on privacy. After communicating with the other justices, Blackmun felt that his opinion did not adequately reflect his liberal colleagues’ views. In March 1972, the court issued a ruling in Eisenstadt v. Baird, a landmark case which applied the earlier marital privacy right now also to unmarried individuals. Douglas wrote to Blackmun in May 1972 that he thought there were four judges who were definitely willing to rule in the majority—himself, Brennan, Stewart, and Marshall. Blackmun at one point thought all seven justices wanted to vote in the majority. In May 1972, Blackmun proposed that the case be reargued. Justice Douglas threatened to write a dissent from the reargument order because he and the other liberal justices were suspicious that Rehnquist and Powell would vote to uphold the Texas abortion statutes. He was coaxed out of the action by his colleagues, and instead his dissent was merely mentioned in the reargument order without further statement or opinion. The case was reargued on October 11, 1972. Weddington continued to represent the pseudonymous Jane Roe, and Texas Assistant Attorney General Robert C. Flowers replaced Jay Floyd for Texas. A June 1972 memo written by Douglas to his colleagues discussing the case was leaked to and published in The Washington Post before the decision was published. Drafting the opinion Blackmun continued to work on his opinions in both cases over the summer recess, even though there was no guarantee that he would be assigned to write them again. Over the recess, he spent a week researching the history of abortion at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where he had worked in the 1950s. He talked daily on the phone with George Frampton, his 28-year old law clerk who stayed behind in Washington, D.C. Frampton researched the history of abortion using a book authored by Lawrence Lader, the founding chairman of what is now called NARAL Pro-Choice America. Blackmun’s papers made available since his death contain at least seven citations for Lader’s 1966 book, Abortion. Chapter 16 of his book, “A Blueprint for Changing U.S. Abortion Laws” predicted that if abortion were to be legalized, “the possibility of community opposition is slight”. Lader also predicted that “If such a theoretical case was carried to a high court, perhaps even the U.S. Supreme Court, and the judges confirmed a broad interpretation of the meaning of a threat to life, undoubtedly a landmark in abortion decisions would be reached.” The historical survey for Roe also relied on several articles by Cyril Means, who served as counsel to NARAL. In the articles, Means misrepresented the common law tradition in ways that were helpful to the Roe side. Roy Lucas, the principal attorney assisting Weddington and Coffee, had previously received a memo from his colleague David M. Tundermann about Means’s scholarship. The memo stated that the conclusions in Means’s articles “sometimes strain credibility.” It also stated: Where the important thing is to win the case no matter how, however, I suppose I agree with Means’s technique: begin with a scholarly attempt at historical research; if it doesn’t work, fudge it as necessary; write a piece so long that others will read only your introduction and conclusion; then keep citing it until courts begin picking it up. This preserves the guise of impartial scholarship while advancing the proper ideological goals. After the Court held the second argument session, Powell said he would agree with Blackmun’s conclusion but pushed for Roe to be the lead of the two abortion cases being considered. Powell also suggested that the Court strike down the Texas law on privacy grounds. Byron White was unwilling to sign on to Blackmun’s opinion, and Justice Rehnquist had already decided to dissent. During the drafting process, the justices discussed the trimester framework at great length. Powell had suggested that the point where the state could intervene be placed at viability, which Thurgood Marshall supported as well. In an internal memo to the other justices before the majority decision was published, Justice Blackmun wrote: “You will observe that I have concluded that the end of the first trimester is critical. This is arbitrary, but perhaps any other selected point, such as quickening or viability, is equally arbitrary.” In the same memo he suggested that the end of the first trimester seemed more likely to get support from other justices and allowed states the ability to adjust their statutes. He was of the impression that doctors were concerned that recovering abortion patients would take up too many hospital beds, and that abortion patients later than the first trimester were more likely to require hospital beds than those whose fetuses were aborted earlier. Contrary to the justices who preferred viability, Douglas preferred the first-trimester line. Stewart said the lines were “legislative” and wanted more flexibility and consideration paid to state legislatures, though he joined Blackmun’s decision. William Brennan proposed abandoning frameworks based on the age of the fetus and instead allowing states to regulate the procedure based on its safety for the mother. Supreme Court decision On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in favor of “Jane Roe” (Norma McCorvey) holding that women in the United States had a fundamental right to choose whether to have abortions without excessive government restriction and striking down Texas’s abortion ban as unconstitutional. The decision was issued together with a companion case, Doe v. Bolton, which involved a similar challenge to Georgia’s abortion laws. Larry Hammond, a law clerk for Powell, gave a Time reporter a copy of the decision “on background”, expecting that it would be issued by the court before the next issue of Time was published. However, due to a delay in the decision’s release, the text of the decision appeared on newsstands a few hours before it was published by the court. Burger demanded a meeting with Time’s editors and punishment for the leaker. Powell refused Hammond’s resignation, however, on the grounds “that Hammond had been double-crossed” by the reporter. Opinion of the Court After reciting the facts of the case, the Court’s opinion first addressed procedure and justiciability. This included mootness, a legal doctrine that prevents American federal courts from hearing cases that have ceased to be “live” controversies because of intervening events. Under a normal application of the doctrine, McCorvey’s appeal would have been considered moot because she had already given birth to her child and therefore no longer had a pregnancy to abort. The Court concluded that an established exception to the mootness doctrine allows consideration of cases that are “capable of repetition, yet evading review”. Blackmun noted that McCorvey might get pregnant again, and pregnancy would normally conclude more quickly than an appellate process: “If that termination makes a case moot, pregnancy litigation seldom will survive much beyond the trial stage, and appellate review will be effectively denied.” Abortion and right to privacy After dealing with mootness and standing, the Court proceeded to the main issue of the case: the constitutionality of Texas’s abortion law. The Court first surveyed abortion’s status throughout the legal history of Roman law and the Anglo-American common law. It also reviewed the developments of medical procedures and technology used in abortions. After its historical surveys, the Court introduced the concept of a constitutional “right to privacy” that it said had been intimated in its earlier decisions Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, which involved parental control over childrearing, and Griswold v. Connecticut, which involved the use of contraception. Then, “with virtually no further explanation of the privacy value”, the Court ruled that regardless of exactly which provisions were involved, the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of liberty covered a right to privacy that protected a pregnant woman’s decision whether to abort a pregnancy. This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or … in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether to terminate her pregnancy. — Roe, 410 U.S. at 153. The Court reasoned that outlawing abortions would infringe a pregnant woman’s right to privacy for several reasons: having unwanted children “may force upon the woman a distressful life and future”; it may bring imminent psychological harm; caring for the child may tax the mother’s physical and mental health; and because there may be “distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child”. But the Court rejected the notion that this right to privacy was absolute. It held instead that women’s abortion right must be balanced against other government interests, such as protecting the mother’s health and protecting the life of the fetus. The Court held that the interests were sufficiently compelling to permit states to impose some limitations on pregnant women’s right to choose to have an abortion. A State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision. … We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation. — Roe, 410 U.S. at 154. Texas’s lawyers had argued that limiting abortion to situations where the mother’s life was in danger was justified because life began at the moment of conception, and therefore the state’s governmental interest in protecting prenatal life applied to all pregnancies regardless of their stage. But the Court said that there was no indication that the Constitution’s uses of the word “person” were meant to include fetuses, and it rejected Texas’s argument that a fetus should be considered a “person” with a legal and constitutional right to life. The Court observed that there was still great disagreement over when an unborn fetus becomes a living being. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, in this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer. — Roe, 410 U.S. at 159. To balance women’s rights to privacy and state governments’ interests in protecting mothers’ health and prenatal life, the Court created the trimester framework. During the first trimester, when it was believed that the procedure was safer than childbirth, the Court ruled that a state government could place no restrictions on women’s ability to choose to abort pregnancies other than imposing minimal medical safeguards, such as requiring abortions to be performed by licensed physicians. From the second trimester on, the Court ruled that evidence of increasing risks to the mother’s health gave states a compelling interest that allowed them to enact medical regulations on abortion procedures so long as they were reasonable and “narrowly tailored” to protecting mothers’ health. From the beginning of the third trimester on—the point at which a fetus became viable under the medical technology available in the early 1970s—the Court ruled that a state’s interest in protecting prenatal life became so compelling that it could legally prohibit all abortions except where necessary to protect the mother’s life or health. Having completed its analysis, the Court concluded that Texas’s abortion statutes were unconstitutional and struck them down. A state criminal abortion statute of the current Texas type, that excepts from criminality only a life-saving procedure on behalf of the mother, without regard to pregnancy stage and without recognition of the other interests involved, is violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. — Roe, 410 U.S. at 164. Concurrences Three justices from the majority filed concurring opinions in the case. Justice Potter Stewart wrote a concurring opinion in which he said that even though the Constitution makes no mention of the right to choose to have an abortion without interference, he thought the Court’s decision was a permissible interpretation of the doctrine of substantive due process, which says that the Due Process Clause’s protection of liberty extends beyond simple procedures and protects certain fundamental rights. Justice William O. Douglas’s concurring opinion described his view that although the Court was correct to find that the right to choose to have an abortion was a fundamental right, he thought it would have been better to derive it from the Ninth Amendment—which states that the fact that a right is not specifically enumerated in the Constitution shall not be construed to mean that American people do not possess it—rather than through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote a concurrence in which he wrote that he thought it would be permissible to allow a state to require two physicians to certify an abortion before it could be performed. His concurrence also states: I do not read the Court’s holdings today as having the sweeping consequences attributed to them by the dissenting Justices; the dissenting views discount the reality that the vast majority of physicians observe the standards of their profession, and act only on the basis of carefully deliberated medical judgments relating to life and health. Plainly, the Court today rejects any claim that the Constitution requires abortions on demand. This has been interpreted as Chief Justice Burger thinking that medical standards and judgment would restrict the number of abortions. Instead of the law restricting abortions to limited circumstances as pre-Roe, now doctors would get to do the restricting. This understanding of Roe appears to be related to several statements in the majority opinion. Justice Blackmun’s majority opinion states, “the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without regulation by the state, that, in his medical judgment, the patient’s pregnancy should be terminated.” It also states, “For the stage, prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s attending physician.” Six days prior to January 22, Justice Blackmun prepared “a transcript of what I shall say, and there should be at least some reason for the press not going all the way off the deep end.” The unissued news release stated: … the Court does not today hold that the Constitution compels abortion on demand. It does not today pronounce that a pregnant woman has an absolute right to abortion. It does, for the first trimester of pregnancy, cast the abortion decision and the responsibility for it upon the attending physician. These statements appear to indicate that the justices voting in the majority thought that patients had personal physicians. Earlier in American history it was once common for people to have individual doctors, but the nature of doctor-patient relationship had already changed prior to Roe. Dissents Justices Byron White and William Rehnquist dissented from the Court’s decision. White’s dissent, which was issued with Roe’s companion case, Doe v. Bolton, argued that the Court had no basis for deciding between the competing values of pregnant women and unborn children. I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the woman, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court. — Doe, 410 U.S. at 221–22 (White, J., dissenting). White argued that abortion, “for the most part, should be left with the people and the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs.” Rehnquist’s dissent compared the majority’s use of substantive due process to the Court’s repudiated use of the doctrine in the 1905 case Lochner v. New York. He elaborated on several of White’s points and asserted that the Court’s historical analysis was flawed: To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. As early as 1821, the first state law dealing directly with abortion was enacted by the Connecticut Legislature. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion. While many States have amended or updated their laws, 21 of the laws on the books in 1868 remain in effect today. — Roe, 410 U.S. at 174–76 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). From the actual historical record, Rehnquist concluded, “There apparently was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any of the other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted.” Because of this, “the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter.” Reception There was a strong response to the decision shortly after it was issued. The most prominent organized groups which responded to Roe are NARAL Pro-Choice America and the National Right to Life Committee.

  • Oscar Romero Part II

    June 24th, 2022

    Investigations into the assassination

    To date, no one has ever been prosecuted for the assassination, or confessed to it to police. The gunman had not been identified until 2000.

    Immediately following the assassination, José Napoleón Duarte, the newly appointed foreign minister of El Salvador, actively promulgated a “blame on both sides” propaganda trope in order to provide cover for the lack of official inquiry into the assassination plot.

    Subsequent investigations by the United Nations and other international bodies have established that the four assassins were members of a death squad led by D’Aubuisson. Revelations of the D’Aubuisson plot came to light in 1984 when US ambassador Robert White testified before the United States Congress that “there was sufficient evidence” to convict D’Aubuisson of planning and ordering Romero’s assassination. In 1993, an official United Nations report identified D’Aubuisson as the man who ordered the killing. D’Aubuisson had strong connections to the Nicaraguan National Guard and to its offshoot the Fifteenth of September Legion and had also planned to overthrow the government in a coup. Later, he founded the political party Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), and organized death squads that systematically carried out politically motivated assassinations and other human rights abuses in El Salvador. Álvaro Rafael Saravia, a former captain in the Salvadoran Air Force, was chief of security for D’Aubuisson and an active member of these death squads. In 2003 a United States human rights organization, the Center for Justice and Accountability, filed a civil action against Saravia. In 2004, he was found liable by a US District Court under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) (28 U.S.C. § 1350) for aiding, conspiring, and participating in the assassination of Romero. Saravia was ordered to pay $10 million for extrajudicial killing and crimes against humanity pursuant to the ATCA; he has since gone into hiding. On 24 March 2010–the thirtieth anniversary of Romero’s death–Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes offered an official state apology for Romero’s assassination. Speaking before Romero’s family, representatives of the Catholic Church, diplomats, and government officials, Funes said those involved in the assassination “unfortunately acted with the protection, collaboration, or participation of state agents.”

    A 2000 article by Tom Gibb, then a correspondent with The Guardian and later with the BBC, attributes the murder to a detective of the Salvadoran National Police named Óscar Pérez Linares, on orders of D’Aubuisson. The article cites an anonymous former death squad member who claimed he had been assigned to guard a house in San Salvador used by a unit of three counter-guerrilla operatives directed by D’Aubuisson. The guard, whom Gibb identified as “Jorge,” purported to have witnessed Linares fraternizing with the group, which was nicknamed the “Little Angels,” and to have heard them praise Linares for the killing. The article furthermore attributes full knowledge of the assassination to the CIA as far back as 1983. The article reports that both Linares and the Little Angels commander, who Jorge identified as “El Negro Mario,” were killed by a CIA-trained Salvadoran special police unit in 1986; the unit had been assigned to investigate the murders. In 1983, U.S. Lt. Col. Oliver North, aide to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, is alleged to have personally requested the Salvadoran military to “remove” Linares and several others from their service. Three years later they were pursued and extra-judicially killed – Linares after being found in neighboring Guatemala. The article cites another source in the Salvadoran military as saying, “they knew far too much to live.”

    In a 2010 article for the Salvadoran online newspaper El Faro, Saravia was interviewed from a mountain hideout. He named D’Aubuisson as giving the assassination order to him over the phone, and said that he and his cohorts drove the assassin to the chapel and paid him 1,000 Salvadoran colóns after the event.

    In April 2017, however, in the wake of the overruling of a civil war amnesty law the previous year, a judge in El Salvador, Rigoberto Chicas, allowed the case against the escaped Saravia’s alleged role in the murder of Romero to be reopened. On 23 October 2018, days after Romero’s canonization, Judge Chicas issued a new arrest warrant for him, and Interpol and the National Police are charged with finding his hideout and apprehending him. As both D’Aubuisson and Linares had already died, they could not be prosecuted.

    Legacy

    International recognition

    During his first visit to El Salvador in 1983, Pope John Paul II entered the cathedral in San Salvador and prayed at Romero’s tomb, despite opposition from the government and from some within the church who strongly opposed liberation theology. Afterwards, the Pope praised Romero as a “zealous and venerated pastor who tried to stop violence.” John Paul II also asked for dialogue between the government and opposition to end El Salvador’s civil war.

    On 7 May 2000, in Rome’s Colosseum during the Jubilee Year celebrations, Pope John Paul II commemorated 20th century martyrs. Of the several categories of martyrs, the seventh consisted of Christians who were killed for defending their brethren in the Americas. Despite the opposition of some social conservatives within the church, John Paul II insisted that Romero be included. He asked the organizers of the event to proclaim Romero “that great witness of the Gospel.”

    On 21 December 2010, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 March as the International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims which recognizes, in particular, the important work and values of Romero.

    On 22 March 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama visited Romero’s tomb during an official visit to El Salvador. Irish President Michael D. Higgins visited the cathedral and tomb of Romero on 25 October 2013 during a state visit to El Salvador. Famed linguist Noam Chomsky speaks highly of Romero’s social work, and refers often to his murder. In 2014, El Salvador’s main international airport was named after him, becoming Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez International Airport, and later, San Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez International Airport in 2018 after his canonization.

    Romero is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 24 March.

    Sainthood

    Process for beatification

    Romero’s sainthood cause at the Vatican was opened in 1993, but the Catholic News Service reported that it “was delayed for years as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith studied his writings, amid wider debate over whether he had been killed for his faith or for political reasons.”

    In March 2005, Vincenzo Paglia, the Vatican official in charge of the process, announced that Romero’s cause had cleared a theological audit by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, at the time headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later elected Pope Benedict XVI) and that beatification could follow within six months. Pope John Paul II died within weeks of those remarks. Predictably, the transition of the new pontiff slowed down the work of canonizations and beatifications. Pope Benedict instituted changes that had the overall effect of reining in the Vatican’s so-called “factory of saints.” In an October 2005 interview, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, was asked if Paglia’s predictions of a clearance for Romero’s beatification remained on track. Saraiva responded, “Not as far as I know today,” In November 2005, the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica signaled that Romero’s beatification was still “years away.”

    Although Benedict XVI had always been a fierce critic of liberation theology, Paglia reported in December 2012 that the Pope had informed him of the decision to “unblock” the cause and allow it to move forward. However, no progress was made before Benedict’s resignation in February 2013. Pope Francis was elected in March 2013, and in September 2013, Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stated that the Vatican doctrinal office has been “given the greenlight” to pursue sainthood for Romero.

    Beatification

    On 18 August 2014, Pope Francis said that “[t]he process [of beatification of Romero] was at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, blocked for ‘prudential reasons’, so they said. Now it is unblocked.” Francis stated that “There are no doctrinal problems and it is very important that [the beatification] is done quickly.” The beatification signaled Francis’ affirmation of Romero’s work with the poor and as a major change in the direction of the church since he was elected.

    In January 2015, an advisory panel to the Roman Curia’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints voted unanimously to recognize Romero as a martyr, and the cardinals who were voting members of the Congregation unanimously recommended to Francis that he be beatified as a martyr (a martyr can be beatified without recognition of a miracle). Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the postulator (chief promoter) of the causes of saints, said that Romero’s assassination at the altar was intended “to strike the Church that flowed from the Second Vatican Council” and that the motive for his murder “was not caused by motives that were simply political, but by hatred for a faith that, imbued with charity, would not be silent in the face of the injustices that relentlessly and cruelly slaughtered the poor and their defenders.” On 3 February 2015, Francis received Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, in a private audience, and authorized Amato to promulgate (officially authorize) Romero’s decree of martyrdom, meaning it had gained the Congregation’s voting members and the Pope’s approval. This cleared the way for the Pope to later set a date for his beatification.

    The beatification of Romero was held in San Salvador on 23 May 2015 in the Plaza Salvador del Mundo under the Monumento al Divino Salvador del Mundo. Amato presided over the ceremony on behalf of Francis, who in a letter to Archbishop of San Salvador José Luis Escobar Alas marked the occasion by calling Romero “a voice that continues to resonate.” An estimated 250,000 people attended the service, many watching on large television screens set up in the streets around the plaza.

    Canonization

    Three miracles were submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome in October 2016 that could have led to Romero’s canonization. But each of these miracles was rejected after being investigated. A fourth (concerning the pregnant woman Cecilia Maribel Flores) was investigated in a diocesan process in San Salvador that was opened on 31 January 2017 and which concluded its initial investigation on 28 February before documentation was submitted to Rome via the apostolic nunciature. The C.C.S. validated this on 7 April. On 11 August, Paglia celebrated the Romero Centenary Mass in St George’s Cathedral, Southwark, in London, where the cross and relics of Romero are preserved. Subsequently, medical experts issued unanimous approval to the presented miracle on 26 October with theologians also confirming their approval on 14 December. The C.C.S. members likewise approved the case on 6 February 2018. Pope Francis approved this miracle on 6 March 2018, allowing for Romero to be canonized and the date was announced at a consistory of cardinals held on 19 May. The canonization was celebrated in Rome’s Saint Peter’s Square on 14 October 2018.

    Previously, there had been hopes that Romero would be canonized during a possible papal visit to El Salvador on 15 August 2017 – the centennial of the late bishop’s birth – or that he could be canonized in Panama during World Youth Day in 2019.

    Romero was the first Salvadoran to be raised to the altars; the first martyred archbishop of America, the first to be declared a martyr after the Second Vatican Council; and the first native saint of Central America, (Peter of Saint Joseph de Betancur, who did all his work for which he was canonized in the city of Santiago de los Caballeros of Guatemala, was from Tenerife, Spain,) Romero had already been included on the Anglican Church’s list of official saints and on the Lutheran Church’s liturgical calendar.

    Homages and cultural references

    Monumento al Divino Salvador del Mundo in Plaza Salvador del Mundo

    Institutions

    The Romero Centre in Dublin, Ireland, is today an important centre that “promotes Development Education, Arts, Crafts, and Awareness about El Salvador.”

    The Christian Initiative Romero is a non-profit organization in Germany working in support of industrial law and human rights in Central American countries.

    The Romero Institute, a nonprofit law and public policy center in Santa Cruz, California, U.S., headed by Daniel Sheehan, was named after Archbishop Romero in 1996.

    In 1989 the Toronto Catholic District School Board opened a secondary school in Toronto, Canada, named after Archbishop Óscar Romero called St. Oscar Romero Catholic Secondary School.

    St. Oscar Romero Catholic High School in Edmonton, Canada, formerly known as Archbishop Oscar Romero, and as Blessed Oscar Romero throughout his canonization.

    St Oscar Romero Catholic School, a coeducational secondary school in Worthing, West Sussex, England.

    Romero Center Ministries in Camden, New Jersey, U.S., provides Catholic education and retreat experiences inspired by Archbishop Óscar Romero’s prophetic witness. The mission of Romero Center Ministries is to “seek personal, communal, and societal transformation by living ministry as proclaimed in Christ’s Gospel.” The center hosts over 1,600 guests annually from high schools, colleges, and youth groups which participate in the Urban Challenge program.

    Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, has a residence hall named after him, called Oscar Romero Hall.

    Television and film

    Oliver Stone’s 1986 film Salvador depicts a fictionalized version of the assassination of Romero (played by José Carlos Ruiz) in a pivotal scene. Romero’s assassination (with René Enríquez as Romero) was also featured in the 1983 television film Choices of the Heart about the life and death of American Catholic missionary Jean Donovan.

    The Archbishop’s life is the basis of the 1989 film Romero, directed by John Duigan and starring Raul Julia as Romero. It was produced by Paulist Productions (a film company run by the Paulist Fathers, a Roman Catholic society of priests). Timed for release ten years after Romero’s death, it was the first Hollywood feature film ever to be financed by the order. The film received respectful, if less-than-enthusiastic, reviews. Roger Ebert typified the critics who acknowledged that “The film has a good heart, and the Julia performance is an interesting one, restrained and considered. …The film’s weakness is a certain implacable predictability.”

    In 2005, while at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Daniel Freed, an independent documentary filmmaker and frequent contributor to PBS and CNBC, made a 30-minute film entitled The Murder of Monseñor which not only documented Romero’s assassination but also told the story of how Álvaro Rafael Saravia – whom a US District court found, in 2004, had personally organized the assassination – moved to the United States and lived for 25 years as a used car salesman in Modesto, California, until he became aware of the pending legal action against him in 2003 and disappeared, leaving behind his drivers license and social security card, as well as his credit cards and his dog. In 2016 a 1993 law protecting the actions of the military during the Civil War was overruled by a Salvadoran high court and on 23 October 2018, another court ordered the arrest of Saravia.

    The Daily Show episode on 17 March 2010 showed clips from the Texas State Board of Education in which “a panel of experts” recommended including Romero in the state’s history books, but an amendment proposed by Patricia Hardy to exclude Romero was passed on 10 March 2010. The clip of Ms. Hardy shows her arguing against including Romero because “I guarantee you most of you did not know who Oscar Romero was. …I just happen to think it’s not [important].”

    A film about the Archbishop, Monseñor, the Last Journey of Óscar Romero, with the priest Robert Pelton serving as executive producer, had its United States premiere in 2010. This film won the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Award for Merit in film, in competition with 25 other films. Pelton was invited to show the film throughout Cuba. It was sponsored by ecclesial and human rights groups from Latin America and from North America. Alma Guillermoprieto in The New York Review of Books describes the film as a “hagiography,” and as “an astonishing compilation of footage” of the final three years of his life.

    Visual arts

    St. James the Greater Catholic Church in Charles Town, West Virginia is the first known Catholic Church in the United States to venerate St. Oscar Romero with a stained glass window in its building. The project was led by the first Spanish priest of the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese, José Escalante, who is originally from El Salvador, as a gift to the Spanish community of the parish.

    John Roberts sculpted a statue of Óscar Romero that fills a prominent niche on the western facade of Westminster Abbey in London; it was unveiled in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II in 1998.

    Joan Walsh-Smith sculpted a statue of Saint Óscar Romero at The Holy Cross College Ellenbrook Western Australia in 2017. The sculpture depicts their College Patron “walking his faith” on his journey with the poor in El Salvador.

    From the Gallery of 20th-century martyrs at Westminster Abbey – Mother Elizabeth of Russia, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Archbishop Óscar Romero and Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer

    Frank Diaz Escalet, 1998, “Oscar Romero, Un Regalo De Dios Para El Mundo Entero;” acrylic on Masonite. This painting is in a private collection in Sacramento, California.

    Music

    Violinist Jean-Luc Ponty’s album Individual Choice has a song dedicated to Oscar Romero: “Eulogy to Oscar Romero”

    Political writing

    In their book Manufacturing Consent (1988), Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman compared US media coverage of the murders of Romero and other Latin American clergy in US client states with coverage of the murder of Catholic priest Jerzy Popiełuszko in “enemy” Communist Poland to explain their propaganda model hypothesis.

  • Oscar Romero Part I

    June 24th, 2022

    Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez (15 August 1917 – 24 March 1980) was a prelate of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. He served as Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of San Salvador, the Titular Bishop of Tambeae, as Bishop of Santiago de María, and finally as the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador. As archbishop, Romero spoke out against social injustice and violence amid the escalating conflict between the military government and left-wing insurgents that led to the Salvadoran Civil War. In 1980, Romero was shot by an assassin while celebrating Mass. Though no one was ever convicted for the crime, investigations by the UN-created Truth Commission for El Salvador concluded that Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, a death squad leader and later founder of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) political party, had ordered the killing.

    In 1997, Pope John Paul II bestowed upon Romero the title of Servant of God, and a cause for his beatification was opened by the church. The cause stalled, but was reopened by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. Romero was declared a martyr by Pope Francis on 3 February 2015, paving the way for his beatification on 23 May 2015. During Romero’s beatification, Pope Francis declared that his “ministry was distinguished by his particular attention to the most poor and marginalized.” Pope Francis canonized Romero on 14 October 2018.

    Seen as a social conservative at the time of his appointment as archbishop in 1977, Romero was deeply affected by the murder of his friend and fellow priest Rutilio Grande and thereafter became an outspoken critic of the military government of El Salvador. Hailed by supporters of liberation theology, Romero, according to his biographer, “was not interested in liberation theology” but faithfully adhered to Catholic teachings on liberation and a preferential option for the poor, desiring a social revolution based on interior reform. Up to the end of his life, his spiritual life drew much from the spirituality of Opus Dei.

    In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 March as the “International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims” in recognition of the Romero’s role in defense of human rights. Romero actively denounced violations of the human rights of the most vulnerable people and defended the principles of protecting lives, promoting human dignity and opposing all forms of violence. Archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas, one of Romero’s successors as Metropolitan Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador, El Salvador, asked Pope Francis to proclaim Romero a Doctor of the Church, which is an acknowledgement from the church that his religious teachings were orthodox and had a significant impact on its philosophy and theology.

    Latin American church groups often proclaim Romero an unofficial patron saint of the Americas and El Salvador; Catholics in El Salvador often refer to him as San Romero, as well as Monseñor Romero. Outside of Catholicism, Romero is honored by other Christian denominations, including the Church of England and Anglican Communion, through the Calendar in Common Worship, as well as in at least one Lutheran liturgical calendar. Romero is also one of the ten 20th-century martyrs depicted in statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey in London.

    Early life

    Óscar Romero was born on 15 August 1917 to Santos Romero and Guadalupe de Jesús Galdámez in Ciudad Barrios in the San Miguel department of El Salvador. On 11 May 1919, at the age of one, Romero was baptized into the Catholic Church by the priest Cecilio Morales.

    Romero entered the local public school, which offered only grades one through three. When finished with public school, Romero was privately tutored by a teacher, Anita Iglesias, until the age of thirteen. During this time Romero’s father trained him in carpentry. Romero showed exceptional proficiency as an apprentice. His father wanted to offer his son the skill of a trade, because in El Salvador studies seldom led to employment, however, Romero broached the idea of studying for the priesthood, which did not surprise those who knew him.

    Priesthood

    Romero entered the minor seminary in San Miguel at the age of thirteen. He left the seminary for three months to return home when his mother became ill after the birth of her eighth child; during this time he worked with two of his brothers in a gold mine near Ciudad Barrios. After graduation, he enrolled in the national seminary in San Salvador. He completed his studies at the Gregorian University in Rome, where he received a Licentiate in Theology cum laude in 1941, but had to wait a year to be ordained because he was younger than the required age. He was ordained in Rome on 4 April 1942. His family could not attend his ordination because of travel restrictions due to World War II. Romero remained in Italy to obtain a doctoral degree in Theology, specializing in ascetical theology and Christian perfection according to Luis de la Puente. Before finishing, in 1943 at the age of 26, he was summoned back home from Italy by his bishop. He traveled home with a good friend, Father Valladares, who was also doing doctoral work in Rome. On the route home, they made stops in Spain and Cuba, where they were detained by the Cuban police, likely for having come from Fascist Italy, and were placed in a series of internment camps. After several months in prison, Valladares became sick and Redemptorist priests helped to have the two transferred to a hospital. From the hospital they were released from Cuban custody and sailed on to Mexico, then traveled overland to El Salvador.

    Romero was first assigned to serve as a parish priest in Anamorós, but then moved to San Miguel where he worked for over 20 years. He promoted various apostolic groups, started an Alcoholics Anonymous group, helped in the construction of San Miguel’s cathedral, and supported devotion to Our Lady of Peace. He was later appointed rector of the inter-diocesan seminary in San Salvador. Emotionally and physically exhausted by his work in San Miguel, Romero took a retreat in January 1966 where he visited a priest for confession and a psychiatrist. He was diagnosed by the psychiatrist as having obsessive-compulsive personality disorder and by priests with scrupulosity.

    In 1966, he was chosen to be Secretary of the Bishops Conference for El Salvador. He also became the director of the archdiocesan newspaper Orientación, which became fairly conservative while he was editor, defending the traditional Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

    Bishop and Archbishop

    On 25 April 1970, Romero was appointed an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of San Salvador and as the titular bishop of Tambeae. He was consecrated on 21 June by Girolamo Prigione, titular Archbishop of Lauriacum. On 15 October 1974, he was appointed Bishop of the Diocese of Santiago de María, a poor, rural region.

    On 3 February 1977, Romero was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador, assuming the position on 22 February. While this appointment was welcomed by the government, many priests were disappointed, especially those openly supportive of Marxist ideology. The progressive priests feared that his conservative reputation would negatively affect liberation theology’s commitment to the poor.

    On 12 March 1977, Rutilio Grande, a Jesuit priest and personal friend of Romero who had been creating self-reliance groups among the poor, was assassinated. His death had a profound impact on Romero, who later stated: “When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead I thought, ‘If they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path.’” Romero urged the government to investigate, but they ignored his request. Furthermore, the censored press remained silent.

    Tension was noted by the closure of schools and the lack of Catholic priests invited to participate in government. In response to Grande’s murder, Romero revealed an activism that had not been evident earlier, speaking out against poverty, social injustice, assassinations and torture.

    On 15 October 1979, the Revolutionary Government Junta (JRG) came to power amidst a wave of human rights abuses by paramilitary right-wing groups and the government, in an escalation of violence that would become the Salvadoran Civil War. Romero criticized the United States for giving military aid to the new government and wrote an open letter to President Jimmy Carter in February 1980, warning that increased US military aid would “undoubtedly sharpen the injustice and the political repression inflicted on the organized people, whose struggle has often been for their most basic human rights.” This letter was then sent, via telegram, from the U.S. embassy in El Salvador to Washington D.C. Carter did not directly respond to the letter; instead, Cyrus Vance, the Secretary of State, wrote a telegram back to the U.S. embassy. The telegram carried a very contradictory message, both stating that the United States will not interfere but will respond to the Revolutionary Government Junta’s requests. It is unknown if Archbishop Romero received the telegram.

    On 11 May 1979, Romero met with Pope John Paul II and unsuccessfully attempted to obtain a Vatican condemnation of the Salvadoran military regime for committing human rights violations and its support of death squads, and expressed his frustration in working with clergy who cooperated with the government. He was encouraged by Pope John Paul II to maintain episcopal unity as a top priority.

    As a result of his humanitarian efforts, Romero began to be noticed internationally. In February 1980, he was given an honorary doctorate by the Catholic University of Louvain.

    Statements on persecution of the church

    Romero denounced the persecution of members of the Catholic Church who had worked on behalf of the poor:

    In less than three years, more than fifty priests have been attacked, threatened, calumniated. Six are already martyrs–they were murdered. Some have been tortured and others expelled [from the country]. Nuns have also been persecuted. The archdiocesan radio station and educational institutions that are Catholic or of a Christian inspiration have been attacked, threatened, intimidated, even bombed. Several parish communities have been raided. If all this has happened to persons who are the most evident representatives of the Church, you can guess what has happened to ordinary Christians, to the campesinos, catechists, lay ministers, and to the ecclesial base communities. There have been threats, arrests, tortures, murders, numbering in the hundreds and thousands…. But it is important to note why [the Church] has been persecuted. Not any and every priest has been persecuted, not any and every institution has been attacked. That part of the church has been attacked and persecuted that put itself on the side of the people and went to the people’s defense. Here again we find the same key to understanding the persecution of the church: the poor.

    — Óscar Romero, Speech at the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, 2 February 1980.

    Popular radio sermons

    By the time of his death, Romero had gained an enormous following among Salvadorans. He did this largely through broadcasting his weekly sermons across El Salvador on the church’s station, YSAX, “except when it was bombed off the air.” In these sermons, he listed disappearances, tortures, murders, and much more each Sunday. This was followed by an hour-long speech on radio the following day. On the importance of these broadcasts, one writer noted that “the archbishop’s Sunday sermon was the main source in El Salvador about what was happening. It was estimated to have the largest listenership of any programme in the country.” According to listener surveys, 73% of the rural population and 47% of the urban listened regularly. Similarly, his diocesan weekly paper Orientación carried lists of cases of torture and repression every week.

    Theology

    According to Jesús Delgado, his biographer and postulator of the cause for his canonization, Romero agreed with the Catholic vision of liberation theology and not with the materialist vision: “A journalist once asked him: ‘Do you agree with Liberation Theology’ And Romero answered: “Yes, of course. However, there are two theologies of liberation. One is that which sees liberation only as material liberation. The other is that of Paul VI. I am with Paul VI.” Delgado said that Romero did not read the books on liberation theology which he received, and he gave the lowest priority to liberation theology among the topics that he studied.

    Romero preached that “the most profound social revolution is the serious, supernatural, interior reform of a Christian.” He also emphasized: “The liberation of Christ and of His Church is not reduced to the dimension of a purely temporal project. It does not reduce its objectives to an anthropocentric perspective: to a material well-being or only to initiatives of a political or social, economic or cultural order. Much less can it be a liberation that supports or is supported by violence.” Romero expressed several times his disapproval of divisiveness in the church. In a sermon preached on 11 November 1979 he said: “the other day, one of the persons who proclaims liberation in a political sense was asked: ‘For you, what is the meaning of the Church’?” He said that the activist “answered with these scandalous words: ‘There are two churches, the church of the rich and the church of the poor. We believe in the church of the poor but not in the church of the rich.’” Romero declared, “Clearly these words are a form of demagogy and I will never admit a division of the Church.” He added, “There is only one Church, the Church that Christ preached, the Church to which we should give our whole hearts. There is only one Church, a Church that adores the living God and knows how to give relative value to the goods of this earth.”

    Spiritual life

    Romero noted in his diary on 4 February 1943: “In recent days the Lord has inspired in me a great desire for holiness. I have been thinking of how far a soul can ascend if it lets itself be possessed entirely by God.” Commenting on this passage, James R. Brockman, Romero’s biographer and author of Romero: A Life, said that “All the evidence available indicates that he continued on his quest for holiness until the end of his life. But he also matured in that quest.”

    According to Brockman, Romero’s spiritual journey had some of these characteristics:

    love for the Church of Rome, shown by his episcopal motto, “to be of one mind with the Church,” a phrase he took from St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises;

    a tendency to make a very deep examination of conscience;

    an emphasis on sincere piety;

    mortification and penance through his duties;

    providing protection for his chastity;

    spiritual direction;

    “being one with the Church incarnated in this people which stands in need of liberation”;

    eagerness for contemplative prayer and finding God in others;

    fidelity to the will of God;

    self-offering to Jesus Christ.

    Romero was a strong advocate of the spiritual charism of Opus Dei. He received weekly spiritual direction from a priest of the Opus Dei movement. In 1975 he wrote in support of the cause of canonization of Opus Dei’s founder, “Personally, I owe deep gratitude to the priests involved with the Work, to whom I have entrusted with much satisfaction the spiritual direction of my own life and that of other priests.”

    Assassination

    On 24 March 1980, Archbishop Romero delivered a sermon in which he called on Salvadoran soldiers, as Christians, to obey God’s higher order and to stop carrying out the government’s repression and violations of basic human rights.

    Romero spent 24 March in a recollection organized by Opus Dei, a monthly gathering of priest friends led by Fernando Sáenz Lacalle. On that day they reflected on the priesthood. That evening, Romero celebrated Mass at a small chapel at Hospital de la Divina Providencia (Divine Providence Hospital), a church-run hospital specializing in oncology and care for the terminally ill. Romero finished his sermon, stepped away from the lectern, and took a few steps to stand at the center of the altar.

    As Romero finished speaking, a red automobile came to a stop on the street in front of the chapel. A gunman emerged from the vehicle, stepped to the door of the chapel, and fired one, possibly two, shots. Romero was struck in the heart, and the vehicle sped off. He died at the Chapel of Hospital de la Divina Providencia in San Salvador.

    Funeral

    Romero was buried in the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador. The Funeral Mass on 30 March 1980 in San Salvador was attended by more than 250,000 mourners from all over the world. Viewing this attendance as a protest, Jesuit priest John Dear has said, “Romero’s funeral was the largest demonstration in Salvadoran history, some say in the history of Latin America.”

    At the funeral, Cardinal Ernesto Corripio y Ahumada, speaking as the personal delegate of Pope John Paul II, eulogized Romero as a “beloved, peacemaking man of God,” and stated that “his blood will give fruit to brotherhood, love and peace.”

    Massacre at Romero’s funeral

    During the ceremony, smoke bombs exploded on the streets near the cathedral and subsequently there were rifle shots that came from surrounding buildings, including the National Palace. Many people were killed by gunfire and in the stampede of people running away from the explosions and gunfire. Official sources reported 31 overall casualties, while journalists claimed that between 30 and 50 died. Some witnesses claimed it was government security forces who threw bombs into the crowd, and army sharpshooters, dressed as civilians, who fired into the chaos from the balcony or roof of the National Palace, however, there are contradictory accounts about the course of the events and one historian, Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, stated that “probably, one will never know the truth about the interrupted funeral.”

    As the gunfire continued, Romero’s body was buried in a crypt beneath the sanctuary. Even after the burial, people continued to line up to pay homage to the assassinated prelate.

    International reaction

    Ireland

    All sections of Irish political and religious life condemned his assassination, with the Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Lenihan “expressing shock and revulsion at the murder of Dr Romero,” while the leader of the Trócaire charity, Bishop Eamon Casey, revealed that he had received a letter from Romero that very day. The previous October, parliamentarians had given their support to the nomination of Romero for the Nobel Peace Prize. In March each year since the 1980s, the Irish–El Salvador Support Committee holds a mass in honour of Romero.

    United Kingdom

    In October 1978, 119 British parliamentarians had nominated Romero for the Nobel Prize for Peace. In this they were supported by 26 members of the United States Congress. When news of the assassination was reported in March 1980, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, was about to be enthroned in Canterbury Cathedral. On hearing of Romero’s death, one writer observed that Runcie “departed from the ancient traditions to decry the murder of Archbishop Óscar Romero in El Salvador.”

    United States

    Public reaction

    The United States public’s reaction to Archbishop Romero’s death was symbolized through the “martyrdom of Romero” as an inspiration to end US military aid to El Salvador. In December 1980 the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union refused to deliver military equipment destined for the Salvadoran government. The leader of the union, Jim Herman, was known as a supporter of Romero and denounced his death. On 24 March 1984 a protest was held in Los Angeles, California where around 3,000 people, organized by 20 November Coalition, protested US intervention in El Salvador, using the anniversary of the Archbishop’s death and his face as a symbol. On 24 March 1990, 10,000 people marched in front of the White House to denounce the military aid that was still flowing from the United States to the Salvadoran government. Protestors carried a bust of the archbishop and quoted some of his speeches, in addition to the event being held on the anniversary of his death. Noted figures Ed Asner and Jennifer Casolo participated in the event.

    Government response

    On 25 March 1980, US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance revealed that the White House would continue to fund the Salvadoran government and it provide military aid, in spite of the pleas of Romero and his death immediately prior to this announcement. On 31 March 1983, Roberto D’Aubuisson was allowed entry to the United States by the State Department after deeming him not barred from entry any longer. When asked about D’Aubuisson’s association with the assassination of Romero, the Department of State responded that “the allegations have not been substantiated.” In November 1993, documents by the Department of State, Department of Defense, and the Central Intelligence Agency were released after pressure by Congress increased. The 12,000 documents revealed that the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush knew of the assassinations conducted by D’Aubuisson, including that of Romero, yet still worked with him despite this.

  • In Memoriam: Celebrities Lost 1838

    June 24th, 2022

    William Clark

    Piet Retief

    Maria Cosway

    Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord

    Jose Bonifacio de Andrada

    Osceola

    Maximilian von Montgelas

    Black Hawk

    Ferdinand Ries

    Francois-Joseph-Victor Broussais

    Thomas Creevey

    Johanna Schopenhauer

    William Henry Ashley

    Gideon Blackburn

    John Jamieson

    Nathaniel Bowditch

    Bernhard Crusell

    Lorenzo da Ponte

    Letitia Elizabeth Landon

    Ferenc Kolcsey

    Joseph Lancaster

    Pierre Louis Dulong

    John Stevens

    Thomas Andrew Knight

    Laure Junot, Duchess of Abrantes

    Frederic-Cesar de la Harpe

    Joshua Humphreys

    Phillipe-Antoine Merlin de Oduai

    Jean Marc Gaspard Itard

    Bernard Courtois

    Rene Caillie

    Karl Philipp von Wrede

  • Happy Birthday: June 24, 2022

    June 24th, 2022

    Jeff Beck, 78

    Mick Fleetwood, 75

    Peter Weller, 75

    Mindy Kaling, 43

    Minka Kelly, 42

    Michele Lee, 80

    Arthur Brown, 80

    Georg Stanford Brown, 79

    Colin Blunstone, 77

    John Illsley, 73

    Derrick Simpson, 72

    Nancy Allen, 72

    Joe Penny, 66

    Andy McCluskey, 63

    Siedah Garrett, 62

    Iain Glen, 61

    Curt Smith, 61

    Danielle Spencer, 57

    Sherry Stringfield, 55

    Glenn Medeiros, 52

    Carlo Gallo, 47

    Amir Talai, 45

    Vanessa Ray, 41

    Justin Hires, 37

    Solange Knowles, 36

    Max Ehrich, 31

    Beanie Feldstein, 29

    E. I. duPont (June 24, 1771-October 31, 1834)

    Ambrose Bierce (June 24, 1842-c. 1914)

    Roy O. Disney (June 24, 1893-December 20, 1971)

    Jack Dempsey (June 24, 1895-May 31, 1983)

  • Luke: Chapter 12

    June 23rd, 2022

    1 In the mean time, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

    2 For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.

    3 Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.

    4 And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.

    5 But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.

    6 Are not five sparrows sold for two farthlings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?

    7 But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.

    8 Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God:

    9 But he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God.

    10 And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven.

    11 And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say:

    12 For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.

    13 And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me.

    14 And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?

    15 And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

    16 And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully:

    17 And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?

    18 And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.

    19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.

    20 But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?

    21 So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.

    22 And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on.

    23 The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.

    24 Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?

    25 And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?

    26 If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?

    27 Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

    28 If then God so clothe the grass, which is to day in the field, and to morrow is cast into the oven; how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith?

    29 And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye or doubtful mind.

    30 For all these things do the nations of the world seek after: and your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.

    31 But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.

    32 Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

    33 Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth.

    34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

    35 Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning;

    36 And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately.

    37 Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.

    38 And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants.

    39 And this know, that if the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through.

    40 Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.

    41 Then Peter said unto him, Lord, speakest thou this parable unto us, or even to all?

    42 And the Lord said, Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season?

    43 Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.

    44 Of a truth I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath.

    45 But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken;

    46 The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.

    47 And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.

    48 But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

    49 I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?

    50 But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!

    51 Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division:

    52 For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three.

    53 The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

    54 And he said also to the people, When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is.

    55 And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say, There will be heat; and it cometh to pass.

    56 Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time?

    57 Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?

    58 When though goest with thine adversary to the magistrate, as thou art in the way, give diligence that thou mayest be delivered from him; lest he hale thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and the officer cast thee into prison.

    59 I tell thee, thou shalt not depart thence, till thou hast paid the very last mite.

  • Exodus: Chapter 9

    June 23rd, 2022

    1 Then the LORD said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh, and tell him, Thus saith the LORD God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me.

    2 For if thou refuse to let them go, and wilt hold them still.

    3 Behold, the hand of the LORD is upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep: there shall be a very grievous murrain.

    4 And the LORD shall between the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Egypt: and there shall nothing die of all that is the children’s of Israel.

    5 And the LORD appointed a set time, saying, To morrow the LORD shall do this thing in the land.

    6 And the LORD did that thing on the morrow, and all the cattle of Egypt died: but of the cattle of the children of Israel died not alone.

    7 And Pharaoh sent, and, behold, there was not one of the cattle of the Israelites dead. And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go.

    8 And the LORD said unto Moses and unto Aaron, Take to you handfuls of ashes of the furnace, and let Moses sprinkle it toward the heaven in the sight of Pharaoh.

    9 And it shall become small dust in all the land of Egypt, and shall be a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast, throughout all the land of Egypt.

    10 And they took ashes of the furnace, and stood before Pharaoh; and Moses sprinkled it up toward heaven; and it became a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast.

    11 And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils; for the boil was upon the magicians, and upon all the Egyptians.

    12 And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had spoken unto Moses.

    13 And the LORD said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me.

    14 For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon they servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth.

    15 For now I will stretch out my hand, that I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence; and thou shalt be cut off from the earth.

    16 And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth.

    17 As yet exaltest thou thyself against my people, that thou wilt not let them go?

    18 Behold,d to morrow about this time I will cause it to rain a very grievous hail, such as hath not been in Egypt since the foundation thereof even until now.

    19 Send therefore now, and gather thy cattle, and all that thou hast in the field; for upon every man and beast which shall be found in the field, and shall not be brought home, the hail shall come down upon them, and they shall die.

    20 He that feared the word of the LORD among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee into the houses:

    21 And he that regarded not the word of the LORD left his servants and his cattle in the field.

    22 And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch forth thine hand toward heaven, that there may be hail in all the land of Egypt, upon man, and upon beast, and upon every herb of the field, throughout the land of Egypt.

    23 And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven: and the LORD sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground; and the LORD rained all upon the land of Egypt.

    24 So there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous, such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.

    25 And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field.

    26 Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no hail.

    27 And Pharaoh sent, and called for Moses and Aaron, and said unto them, I have sinned this time: the LORD is righteous, and I and my people are wicked.

    28 Intreat the LORD (for it is enough) that there be no more mighty thunderings and hail; and I will let you go, and ye shall stay no longer.

    29 And Moses said unto him, As soon as I am gone out of the city, I will spread abroad my hands unto the LORD; and the thunder shall cease, neither shall there be any more hail; that thou mayest know how that the earth is the LORD’s.

    30 But as or thee and thy servants, I know that ye will not yet fear the LORD God.

    31 And the flax and the barley was smitten: for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was bolled.

    32 But the wheat and the rie were not smitten: for they were not grown up.

    33 And Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh, and spread abroad his hands unto the LORD: and the thunders and hail ceased, and the rain was not poured upon the earth.

    34 And when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunders were ceased, he sinned yet more, and hardened his heart, he and his servants.

    35 And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, neither would he let the children of Israel go; as the LORD had spoken by Moses.

  • Devotion: What Is Your Superpower?

    June 23rd, 2022

    Friday, March 6

    Read Matthew 4:1-4/Psalm 57:1-4

    Who,though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. ~Philippians 2:6

    What Is Your Superpower?

    Much to the dismay of my family, I cannot have sweets in my home. I simply do not have the willpower to walk past the cookie jar. It is hard for me to imagine Jesus’ ability to walk in the desert for forty days without food. Jesus’ temptation was physical, but also mental. Satan tempted Him with both food and power. Satan prodded with the words “If You are the Son of God . . .” Jesus was not only tempted with food but also with the urge to use His godly powers. He resisted both.

    A superpower for resisting temptation would come in handy when trying to lose weight, not to mention when resisting all the many kinds of sin in this world. God did not bless us with such a superpower, but He has given us His Word. Just as Jesus answered Satan with Scripture, we can find our superpower in God’s Word when dealing with our daily struggles. God’s Word is the means by which God strengthens our faith and teaches us about Him. Through His Word, we are able to resist temptation; and when we fall, that same Word promises us forgiveness and renewed strength in Christ.

    Lord Jesus Christ, we ask You to bless us with strength while

    we live in the knowledge of Your forgiveness. Amen.

  • Devotion: One Man

    June 23rd, 2022

    Thursday, March 5

    Read Romans 5:12-19/Psalm 32:5-11

    I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and You forgave the iniquity of my sin. ~Psalm 32:5

    One Man

    The Garden of Eden was a perfect place. Adam and Eve found no pain, no hunger, and no boredom. They walked with God, which is an amazing thing to consider. They had only one job. They were to avoid the tree of the knowledge of god and evil. We do not know how long this perfect existence lasted, but it all slipped away in a moment of sin. It took only one man to pull all of us in a moment of sin. The Law was broken and our need for Christ began.

    Christ was one man too. His actions completely reversed the sin of Adam and all of us born after Adam. In the actions of Jesus’ perfect life, perfect death, and perfect resurrection, our status as sinners changed to one of saints. The actions of one man brought us grief. The actions of Christ brought us righteousness in God’s eyes.

    The season of Lent serves to remind us of our need to repent of our sin and turn to the Savior. The season of Easter will again remind us that our sin is covered by the blood of Jesus. We live as saints of Easter.

    Chief of sinners though I be,

    Jesus shed His blood for me,

    Died that I might live on high,

    Lives that I might never die (LSB 611:1). Amen.

  • Devotion: Judge or Father?

    June 23rd, 2022

    Wednesday, March 4

    Read Genesis 3:16-21/Psalm 39

    The LORD has heard my plea. Psalm 6:9

    Judge or Father?

    Adam and Eve had a perfect life until one bite changed everything. The punishment for their sin meant their lives would be full of pain: pain in childbearing, struggle in work, and difficulty in meeting needs. Their perfect world came crashing down around them. Their sin was great, and their punishment both just and severe.

    The last verse in today’s reading caught my attention in a new way. After pronouncing punishment, God stops to care for Adam and Eve by making them clothing. God did not just immediately kick them out of the Garden and abandon them to their fate. He took care of their most pressing need. What a beautiful act of tenderness and care. Our God is not simply a harsh judge. If this were true, His actions would stop after the punishment. Judges do not follow criminals into the prison to see that their needs are met. No, our God is a father. Because He loves us, He gives us the Law, but He does not stop there. He applies grace. He promises salvation through the work of Jesus, and He also cares for us, forgives us, teaches us, and nurtures our faith. We can rest in our Father’s love.

    Upon your lips, then, lay your had,

    And trust His guiding love;

    Then like a rock your peace shall stand

    Here and in heav’n above (LSB 737:7). Amen.

  • John 3:16

    June 23rd, 2022

    John 3:16—For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

    Romans 10:9-10—That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

    Acts 2:38—Then Peter said unto to them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

    Acts 3:19—Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord;

    Mark 16:16—He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

    Acts 22:16—And now why tarriest thou? Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.

  • Devotion: Who Do You Say That I Am?

    June 23rd, 2022

    God will keep from all danger!!!!!!

    Daily Bible Verse

    And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; ~1 Thessalonians 5:12

    Daily Inspiration

    If God has given us godly leaders to watch over our souls and to help us in our Christian walk, we should be thankful to God for that. We should be willing to give help to support them in their ministry, both because we have benefited from it and because we want others to benefit from it as well.

    Daily Prayer

    O Lord, let us give honor to whom honor is due. Let us befriend and assist Your servants, seeing it as a great opportunity to show thankfulness to You. By taking other burdens off their shoulders, let us open up more time for Your pastors and preachers to prayerfully study Your Word and focus on preaching it faithfully. Amen.

    God is my Provider, TODAY, TOMORROW, and ALWAYS!!!!!!

    Who Do You Say That I Am?

    By Frances Taylor

    Who Do You Say That I Am? Jesus can be our friend and companion, but he is so much more than that. ~Luke 9:18-20

    This is one of my favorite Gospel Passages. It’s a question that I have often used for meditation both for myself and for classes I have taught to both teens and adults. It’s a question that I think we need to reflect upon often as we can lose sight of the importance of Jesus in our lives. And the answer can change. He might be friend, brother, Lord, Savior, shepherd, leader, companion – or just someone we have heard about. One teen answered the question by saying that Jesus was a nice man. Is that all he is? What about the Son of God –Divine? Does it make a difference in my life if I believe that Jesus is God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity who came to save me from eternal death by his dying on a cross? Does it make a difference in how I live if I believe that this is not the end? This is a time for getting to know him better so that I can also live eternally in heaven with the Father. I know this because of the resurrection. Yes, Jesus can be my friend and companion, but he is so much more than that. By his life, I know how to live. By his dying and rising, I can face my own death and the death of those I love because he has shown me that this is not the end. In this today’s gospel, Jesus tell us that we must pick up our cross and follow him. Are we willing to deny ourselves in order to follow Jesus? What am I being asked to change in my life, right now? I am so glad that we are reminded each as we read this question that Jesus asks –not just the disciples – but as well. Who do I say that Jesus is for me, today?

    Prayer

    Loving God, You sent us Your son to save us. May we come to know him better in all the fullness of his Divinity and his Humanity. Amen.

    God knows what you feel inside!!!!!!!!!

    When You Are Lonely and Fearful

    Let your conservation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have for he hath said, I will never leave thee; nor forsake thee. ~Hebrews 13:5

    Bible Verse

    Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. ~Deuteronomy 31:6

    Prayer

    Lord, all that I have, all that I do, is Yours. Keep me in Your care. Guard me in my actions. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

    Bible Verse

    But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit into holiness, and the end everlasting life. ~Romans 6:22

    Bible Verse

    I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound, every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. ~Philippians 4:12

    Prayer

    Heavenly Father, Protect me and my loved ones from harm and help us to know and love You. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

  • In Memoriam: Celebrities Lost 1839

    June 23rd, 2022

    Maharaja Ranjit Singh

    William Murdoch

    Mahmud II

    Frederick VI of Denmark

    Lady Flora Hastings

    Sybil Ludington

    Ferdinand Sor

    Major Ridge

    Friedrich Mohs

    Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy, Baronet

    Joseph Anton Koch

    John Galt

    Robert Young Hayne

    Senusret III

    Benjamin Lundy

    Joseph Fesch

    Caroline Bonaparte

    Hugues-Bernard Maret, Duc de Bassano

    Lord William Bentinck

    James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale

    Mikhail Speransky

    Samuel Smith

    Fernando Paer

    John Batman

    Pedro Romero

    Leonor de Almeida Portugal, Marquise of Aldrina

    Aloysia Weber

    William Smith

    Al-Shawkani

    Aldolphe Nourrit

    John Wesley Jarvis

    Hezekiah Niles

  • Happy Birthday: June 23, 2022

    June 23rd, 2022

    Randy Jackson, 66

    Frances McDormand, 65

    Joss Whedon, 58

    Selma Blair, 50

    Jason Mraz, 45

    Melissa Rauch, 42

    Diana Trask, 82

    Ted Shackleford, 76

    Bryan Brown, 75

    Steve Shelley, 60

    Chico DeBarge, 52

    Joel Edgerton, 48

    KT Tunstall, 47

    Virgo Williams, 47

    Emmanuelle Vaugier, 46

    Duffy, 38

    Ptolemy XV (June 23, 47 B.C.-August 30 B.C.)

    Edward VIII (June 23, 1894-May 28, 1972)

    Alan Turing (June 23, 1912-June 7, 1954)

    Art Modell (June 23, 1925-Septmber 6, 2012)

    June Carter Cash (June 23, 1929-May 15, 2003)

  • In Memoriam: Celebrities Lost 1840

    June 23rd, 2022

    Nicolo Paganini

    Anne Lister

    Princess Elizabeth of the United Kingdom

    Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia

    Beau Brummell

    Princess Augusta Sophia of the United Kingdom

    Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

    Francisco de Paula Santander

    James Prinsep

    Jean-Etienne-Dominique Esquirol

    Maria Beatrice of Savoy

    John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham

    Constantine Samuel Rafinesque

    Dingone Kasenzagakhona

    Louis de Bonald

    Lucien Bonaparte

    Simeon Denis Poisson

    Frances Burney

    Pierre Dupont de l’Etang

    Pierre-Joseph Redoute

    Caspar David Friedrich

    Jacques MacDonald

    Frederick William III of Prussia

    Hannah Webster Foster

    Manmadaw Me Nu

    William Garrow

    Mary Boyle, Countess of Cork and Orrery

    Karl Ferdinand von Grafe

    John Blackwell

    Thug Behram

    Juan Severino Mallari

  • Happy Birthday: June 22, 2022

    June 23rd, 2022

    Kris Kristofferson, 86

    Todd Rundgren, 74

    Meryl Streep, 73

    Lindsay Wagner, 73

    Cyndi Lauper, 69

    Bruce Campbell, 64

    Carson Daly, 49

    Donald Faison, 48

    Alicia “Lecy” Goranson, 48

    Michael L. Learner, 81

    Klaus Maria Brandauer, 79

    Brit Hume, 79

    Peter Asher, 78

    Howard “Eddie” Kaylan, 75

    Alan Osmond, 73

    Graham Greene, 70

    Chris Lemmon, 68

    Derek Forbes, 66

    Gary Beers, 65

    Alan Anton, 63

    Tracy Pollan, 62

    Jimmy Sommerville, 61

    Mike Edwards, 58

    Amy Brenneman, 58

    Steven Page, 52

    Michael Trucco, 52

    Mary Lyn Rajskub, 51

    Chris Traynor, 49

    Mike O’Brien, 46

    Jai Rodriguez, 43

    Lindsay Ridgeway, 37

    Dinah Jane, 25

    Erin Brockovich, 61

    Dan Brown, 58

    John Dillinger (June 22, 1903-July 22, 1934)

  • In Memoriam: Celebrities Lost 1841

    June 23rd, 2022

    William Henry Harrison, 9th U.S. President

    Mikhail Lermontov

    Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin

    Catherine McAuley

    Ming Mang

    Caroline of Baden

    Alexander Burnes

    Maria Anna Thekla Mozart

    David Wilkie

    Frederica of Meckleburg-Strelitz

    Peter Chanel

    Felix Savart

    Philip P. Barbour

    Karl Friedrich Schinkel

    Martin-Michel-Charles Gaudin

    Johann Friedrich Herbart

    Francis Leggatt Chantrey

    Nicolas Appert

    Watana be Kazan

    Charles Poulett Thomason, 1st Baron Sydenham

    Bernard Romberg

    Diogo Alves

    Amelia of Nassau-Weilburg

    Thomas Buchanan

    Augustin Pyrame de Candolle

    Ferdinando Carulli

    Peter Andreas Heiberg

    Countess Claudine Rhedey von Kis-Rhede

    Alexander Shishkov

    Jeckigye Daewongun

    George Green

    Astley Cooper

  • Happy Birthday: June 21, 2022 (Summer Solstice)

    June 23rd, 2022

    Bernie Kopell, 89

    Carrie Preston, 55

    Juliette Lewis, 49

    Chris Pratt, 43

    Lana Del Rey, 34

    Rebecca Black, 25

    Monte Markham, 87

    Mariette Hartley, 82

    Joe Flaherty, 81

    Ray Davies, 78

    Meredith Baxter, 75

    Michael Gross, 75

    Joey Mulland, 75

    Joey Kramer, 72

    Nils Lofgren, 71

    Robyn Douglas, 70

    Berke Breathed, 65

    Josh Pais, 64

    Kathy Mattea, 63

    Marc Copage, 60

    Doug Savant, 58

    Porter Howell, 58

    Michael Dolan, 57

    Lana Wachowski, 57

    Paula Irvine, 54

    Allison Moorer, 50

    Maggie Siff, 48

    Justin Cary, 47

    Mike Einziger, 46

    Brandon Flowers, 41

    Jussie Smollett, 40

    Michael Malarkey, 39

    Kris Allen, 37

    Jascha Washington, 33

    Chandler Baldwin, 30

    Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, 40

    Jean Paul Sartre (June 21, 1932-April 5, 1980)

    Jane Russell (June 21, 1921-February 28, 2011)

  • TPKs Stories on Anchor Podcast

    June 23rd, 2022
    • https://anchor.fm/valerie-harvey/episodes/U–S–President-43-Bill-Clinton-Part-III-e1kbn8t
    • https://anchor.fm/valerie-harvey/episodes/The-Moorhouse-Murders-David-and-Catherine-Birnie-e1kbo4k
    • https://anchor.fm/valerie-harvey/episodes/Genesis-Chapter-16-e1kbofs
    • https://anchor.fm/valerie-harvey/episodes/Matthew-Chapter-16-e1kbonp
    • https://anchor.fm/valerie-harvey/episodes/1-Nephi-Chapter-1-e1kbr4j
    • https://anchor.fm/valerie-harvey/episodes/Doctrine–Covenants-Section-16-e1kbr9v
    • https://anchor.fm/valerie-harvey/episodes/Chapter-26-Laura-Ingalls-Wilders-Farmer-Boy-e1kbrti
  • In Memoriam: Celebrities Lost 1842

    June 22nd, 2022

    Stendhal

    Constanze Mozart

    Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun

    Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley

    Letitia Christian Tyler

    Luigi Cherbini

    Thomas Arnold

    Jules Dumont d’Urville

    Charles Bell

    Henry Shrapnel

    Allan Cunningham

    John W. Beseecher

    Benjamin Wright

    Guiseppe Bendetto Cottlengo

    Charles Armitage Brown

    Franciso Morazan

    William Ellery Channing

    Rowland Hill, 1st Viscount Hill

    Jean Charles Leonard de Sismondi

    Jules Solime Milscent

    Ferdinand Philippe, Duke of Orleans

    Jose de Espronceda y Delgado

    Galbraith Lowry Cole

    John Sell Cotman

    James Ivory

    Dominique Jean Larrey

    Wilhelm Gesenius

    Shah Shujah Durrani

    Peter Fendi

    Clemens Brentano

    Emmanuel, Comte de Las Cases

    William Hone

  • Happy Birthday: June 20, 2022

    June 22nd, 2022

    Brian Wilson, 80

    Lionel Richie, 73

    John Goodman, 70

    Nicole Kidman, 55

    Grace Potter, 39

    Bonnie Bartlett, 93

    James Tolkan, 91

    John McCook, 78

    Anne Murray, 77

    Andre Watts, 76

    Candy Clark, 75

    Michael Anthony, 68

    John Taylor, 62

    Mark degli Antoni, 60

    Jerome Fontamillas, 55

    Murphy Karges, 55

    Dan Tyminski, 55

    Peter Paige, 53

    Josh Lucas, 51

    Twiggy Lucas, 51

    Chino Moreno, 49

    Amos Lee, 45

    Tika Sumpter, 42

    Chris Thompson, 42

    Alisan Porter, 41

    Chris Dudley, 39

    Mark Saul, 37

    Dreama Walker, 36

    Chris Mintz-Plasse, 33

    Kiara Barnes, 26

    Maria Lark, 25

    Bob Villa, 76

    Scipio Africanus (June 20,  ? B.C.-1853?)

    Errol Flynn (June 20, 1909-October 14, 1959)

    Martin Landau (June 20, 1928-July 15, 2012)

    Olympia Dukakis (June 20, 1931-May 1, 2020)

    Danny Aiello (June 20, December 12, 2019)

    John Mahoney (June 20, 1940-February 4, 2018)

  • In Memoriam: Celebrities Lost 1843

    June 22nd, 2022

    Francis Scott Key

    Noah Webster

    Samuel Hahnemann

    Charles Macintosh

    William I of the Netherlands

    Prince of Augustus I Frederick, Duke of Sussex

    John Trumbull

    Robert Southey

    Friedrich Holderlin

    Sequeyan

    Princess Louise Augusta of Denmark

    Hirata Atsutane

    Theodoros Koloketronis

    Smith Thompson

    Samuel Morey

    Alexis Bouvard

    Alexander John Forsyth

    Marie-Madeleine Lachenois

    Leopoldine Hugo

    Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis

    Charles Colville

    Sylvestre Francois Lacroix

    David Porter

    John Armstrong, Jr.

    Isaac Hull

    John Claudius Loudon

    Robert Adrain

    Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

    Joseph Nicollet

    Richard Carlile

    Jakob Friedrich Fries

    Miguel Ricardo de Alava

  • Happy Birthday: June 19, 2022 (Father’s Day-Juneteenth)

    June 22nd, 2022

    Gena Rowlands, 92

    Phylicia Rashad, 74

    Ann Wilson, 72

    Kathleen Turner, 68

    Paula Abdul, 60

    Zoe Saldana, 44

    Macklemore, 39

    Spanky McFarland, 80

    Larry Dunn, 69

    Doug Stone, 66

    Marky “Marty” Debarge, 63

    Andy Lauer, 59

    Brian Vander Ark, 58

    Mia Sara, 55

    Lane Spencer, 53

    Brian “Head” Welch, 52

    Jean Dujardin, 50

    Robin Tunney, 50

    Bumper Robinson, 48

    Poppy Montgomery, 47

    Scott Avett, 46

    Ryan Huest, 46

    Neil Brown, Jr.,42

    Lauren Lee Smith, 42

    Paul Dano, 38

    Giacomo Gianniotti, 33

    Chuku Modu, 32

    Atticus Shaffer, 24

    Blaise Pascal (June 19, 1623-August 9, 1662)

    Moe Howard (June 19, 1897-May 4, 1975)

    Guy Lombardo (June 19, 1902-November 5, 1927)

    Lou Gehrig (June 19, 1903-June 2, 1941)

  • Days of Our Lives – November 8, 1965 See How It All Began

    June 22nd, 2022
  • The Bold and the Beautiful March 1987 – Episode 1

    June 22nd, 2022
  • The Young and the Restless – March 26, 1973

    June 22nd, 2022

  • The Edge of Night – 1964

    June 22nd, 2022

  • Search for Tomorrow – March 29, 1962

    June 22nd, 2022
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