Pro-life supporters' confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade is growing.
The ralliers gathered Wednesday morning outside the Missouri Supreme Court Building in Jefferson City, about an hour after the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments about the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Daniel Hartman, the Missouri director for U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley's office, joined more than 100 people in the rally. Hartman said the pro-life movement listened earlier in the morning as the high court considered what might be the most significant abortion-related case of his lifetime.
Hartman reminded listeners that Hawley filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in July, arguing the court has a duty to oppose bad precedent.
"This idea that Roe is bad precedent is not as controversial as you might think," Hartman continued. He pointed out lawyers for the Dallas waitress known as "Jane Roe," whose real name was Norma McCorvey, acknowledged legal reasoning behind Roe was flawed. He added former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg suggested the court had gone too far. Even President Joe Biden supported a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision years ago, when he was a U.S. senator.
"We understand that 49 years ago, seven justices, seven male justices, just created the right to an abortion out of whole cloth. It finds no support - no basis - in the text," Hartman said. "No basis in our nation's history. And we know the barbaric outcome that it led to."
Sixty million babies have died because of the decision, he said.
Hawley, Hartman said, reminded court justices that they are not required to uphold bad precedent.
"Judicial opinions are just evidence of the law. They are not law themselves," Hartman said. "And those Supreme Court justices - they take their oath to uphold the Constitution, not to uphold past Supreme Court decisions."
Hawley's read on the morning's testimony was that the nation is likely going to see a 6-3 decision upholding Mississippi law, Hartman said.
The question then becomes whether the court overturns Roe, he said, and return the issue to the states, where people may decide at the ballot box whether abortion is legal.
There's a possibility Roe v. Wade is overturned, he said. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh kept returning to what appears to be his theory on the case, Hartman said. That the Constitution is silent on the issue of abortion. Questions from Justice Amy Coney Barrett focused on substantive due process. Substantive due process is the notion that due process not only protects certain legal procedures, but also protects certain rights unrelated to procedure (and has been used to include things like the right to work in an ordinary kind of job, marry, and to raise one's children as a parent) even if they are not specifically included elsewhere in the Constitution.
"Sen. Hawley believes the whole opinion - the whole case - may come down to Justice Barrett," Hartman said.
Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, the event's keynote speaker, said he prays the U.S. Supreme Court makes the right decision.
"The Supreme Court is not my God," he said. "The Supreme Court may decide what is constitutional and what is not. They do not decide what is moral and what is right and what is just."
He said he'd continue to fight for every child.
Ashcroft said he listened to oral arguments in the morning.
"I was disgusted by the judges that seemed more concerned about profit, seemed more concerned about women that would tear out a life and yet refuse to speak about it as life," he said. "That refused to understand that we were talking about children."
The other side looks at babies as paychecks, he said.
"We need to continue to stand up. We've made it the distance in Missouri," Ashcroft said. "I speak to Missouri's Supreme Court. The same court that earlier today said that if you're pro-life, you're not allowed to stand on our steps - the steps that are owned by the people of this state."
Pro-life organizers later acknowledged they had been asked to move off the court's steps and onto the public sidewalk before the event began.
All eyes appeared to be trained on the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday.
U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer sent out a statement early in the morning, calling on the Supreme Court to reconsider the Roe v. Wade decision as it looked at the Mississippi case, known as Dobbs v. Jackson's Women's Health Organization.
Modern medicine has proven unborn babies are human lives, Luetkemeyer said. And he prays the proceedings take another step toward protecting the unborn.