On ‘Roe’ Anniversary, Andrea Mitchell Laments State Abortion Restrictions

Four decades later ‘only 17 states’ fund low-income abortions.

In the 40 years since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, more than 56 million children have been legally killed in the womb. By it’s own accounting, the nation’s largest abortion mill, Planned Parenthood, performed a record high 333,964 abortions in 2011 alone, even as it was cutting back on the other women’s health services it likes to tout. (It provided more than 100,000 breast-health services that year.) And the current administration is the most unapologetically pro-abortion in history. 

But to hear Andrea Mitchell tell it, abortion rights are in danger of being snuffed out in the U.S. On the Jan. 22 anniversary of the court’s decision, Mitchell’s painted a dire picture for abortion supporters on NBC “Nightly News.” (That NBC included the report at all is to its credit. ABC and CBS failed even to note the anniversary.) 

Mitchell brought up the so-called conservative “war on women,” saying “abortion rights and contraception became hot-button issues” in the 2012 campaign, segueing into obligatory video of GOP senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, and Foster Friess, a Santorum campaign surrogate, making their much-maligned comments about abortion and contraception. 

The upshot, according to Mitchell: “Today, seven out of 10 people in our new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll don’t want Roe v. Wade overturned.” Planned Parenthood head Cecile Richards explained, “this two-year assault on women`s health and rights by politicians has boomeranged and backfired.” 

But dark clouds linger, at least according to Mitchell who continued the pro-abortion slant of her piece by including Sarah Weddington, who argued the pro-abortion side 40 years ago in the original Supreme Court case. 

Weddington cautioned, “Now, all of the issue is, but will abortion be available? Because, at the states, there are so many restrictions being passed.” One hundred thirty-five of them in the last two years, according to Mitchell, passed by “Republican state legislatures.” Worse still, “Congress has forbidden federal funding for most abortions and only 17 states fund abortion for low-income women.” 

To add insult to injury, even science seems to be turning against abortion partisans. “modern prenatal imagery gives abortion opponents a new way to make their case.” 

So, by Mitchell’s accounting, four decades after Roe v. Wade, things are pretty grim on the abortion front. Unless you’re an unborn baby.