The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of President Joe Biden's administration withholding funding from Oklahoma over its refusal to direct patients to an abortion hotline, NBC News reported. The court upheld the new regulation that replaced former President Donald Trump's prohibition on such referrals.
Almost immediately after taking office, Biden mandated that providers discuss all options with pregnant mothers, including adoption, prenatal care, and abortion. At first, Oklahoma complied with the mandate of giving out the hotline allegedly providing factual data about the procedure to callers.
However, after the 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the state refused to even provide the hotline phone number despite agreeing to do so at first. Oklahoma is now a state where abortion is illegal except when the life of the mother is in danger.
It also bars anyone from pushing a woman to get an abortion. Now, Oklahoma has paid the price as the Biden administration reallocated $4.5 million in Title X public health funding over that rule.
Oklahoma sued the administration for Title X funding as the prohibition complied with the state's new rules. The state's attorneys argued that the Department of Health and Human Services could not restrict the funding based on those rules.
They warned that doing so would cripple "critical public health services" for Oklahomans. "Depriving these communities of Title X services would be devastating," the states' attorneys said in a court filing.
However, a federal judge disagreed and would not compel the Biden administration to return the grants. Similarly, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided against Oklahoma, ruling that directing patients to a hotline was not equivalent to referring a mother for abortion.
The challenge failed at the state Supreme Court and finally at the highest court in the nation. Biden administration Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar noted that the rules regarding funding were the same across all states.
"Congress routinely conditions federal grants on compliance with requirements contained in agency regulations, and this court has repeatedly upheld such requirements," Prelogar said. However, justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch objected to Tuesday's decision.
The latest ruling in favor of the Biden administration will surely bolster Democrats' argument about keeping abortion legal after Roe v. Wade was overturned. Reversing the Supreme Court's terrible decision that set a worse legal precedent was a feat half a century in the making.
It meant that the ability to kill babies up to the moment of birth was no longer the law of the land but rather a state-by-state issue. Although it was something conservatives worked for it and Christians prayed for, it seems to have backfired.
According to Roll Call, the abortion issue has energized Democratic voters in the 2024 presidential election. Jessica Mackler, president of the abortion activist EMILY’s List, said it has become an asset for Vice President Kamala Harris, who is radically pro-abortion.
"She is somebody who has put this issue front and center because she understands that the stakes are incredibly high for voters across the country and for people across the country. And I think that that is the reason that we see this electric energy in voters across the country," Mackler touted.
While this ruling is disappointing for Oklahoma, the embrace of abortion as a winning issue points to a larger sickness in the American soul. It's a sad fact that leftist women want nothing more than the right to kill their own children, but it's worse that their votes will move the needle accordingly.
