By Maria Gallagher
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. has entered the “Hall of Shame” when it comes to pro-life votes.
The son of the late Pennsylvania pro-life hero Robert Casey Sr. has voted not once, not twice, but three times against the pro-life position in critical votes in the U.S. Senate this year, according to National Right to Life’s highly respected pro-life voting scorecard.
His votes add up to a whopping 0 percent pro-life voting record in 2017.
This from a man who claims he is pro-life — even while he promotes Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion operation, which commits more than 320,000 abortions annually.
In fact, recently, Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Advocates tweeted a photo of a rally it was attending in the state Capitol, which prominently featured Sen. Casey.
The rally claimed to be promoting health care, but abortion is not health care, and so Planned Parenthood’s prominent presence would seem to indicate there was really more on the agenda than doctor’s visits for the destitute.
Casey voted against legislation nullifying pro-abortion President Barack Obama’s parting gift to Planned Parenthood — — a bizarre rule claiming states could not direct money away from the abortion giant. Thankfully, the nullification of the pro-abortion Title X rule passed Congress and was signed into law by pro-life President Donald Trump — — no thanks to Bob Casey.
Casey voted again contrary to the pro-life position of National Right to Life and the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation (an NRLC affiliate) when he voted the wrong way on allowing filibusters for Supreme Court nominations. And then he hit a trifecta by voting against the confirmation of the highly qualified and esteemed Neil Gorsuch as Supreme Court justice. Again, Justice Gorsuch safely made it to the high court with no help from Casey.
One political observer noted that Sen. Casey appears to be positioning himself as the next Elizabeth Warren, the pro-abortion Massachusetts politician who has also scored a 0 percent pro-life voting record this year.
Sen. Warren should not be Casey’s role model. His father should be — a man whose name is immortalized in the U.S. Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. While the case failed to result in an overturn of the tragic Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, it did uphold most of the landmark Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act.
That law, which has certainly stood the test of time, provided for informed consent, parental consent, 24-hour waiting periods for abortion, and bans on late-term abortions and sex selection abortions.
Legal scholars have also noted that Planned Parenthood v. Casey ushered in a new era of greater legal protection for pre-born children and their mothers, with state after state passing law after law. Those protective laws have helped to reduce the nation’s abortion totals to their lowest levels since the 1973 Roe ruling.
Sen. Casey routinely writes letters to constituents claiming he is pro-life. But his voting record does not back up those assertions. Neither do the valentines he routinely sends to the country’s biggest abortion promoter and provider, Planned Parenthood.
In our office is a signed copy of Robert Casey Sr.’s book, Fighting for Life. In this classic work, Casey Sr. recalled the day the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Outside the courtroom, Casey Sr. faced an army of television cameras and microphones. Writing of that moment, he said, “I tried to lay aside all the familiar arguments in the debate and ask the one question I believed to be at the heart of the issue: ‘In this debate, who speaks for the child? Today, I’ve come to say that Pennsylvania speaks for the child.’”
But the son is no longer speaking for Pennsylvania, and his votes in the 115th Congress do not speak for the child, nor for the mother who spends a lifetime grieving a child lost to abortion. ••
Maria Gallagher is legislative director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation.
