U.S. House Votes to Replace Taney Bust With That of Pro-Abortion Supreme Court Justice, Marshall
By Anna DeMeuse, Pro-Life Wisconsin Communications Director
The U.S. House of Representatives decided in a 305 to 113 vote Wednesday to replace the bust of Roger B. Taney, the Supreme Court Justice who authored the Dred Scott decision, with one of Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court Justice who helped craft the majority opinion of the court in Roe v. Wade.
In 1857, Chief Justice Taney wrote the infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford opinion which essentially stated that although Dred Scott had been living in a free state, he was not considered a citizen of the United States and therefore was denied equal protection of rights under the law because of the color of his skin. It is one thing to remove the bust of Taney due to his egregious court opinion in 1857, but to replace the sculpture with one of another Supreme Court Justice who delivered an equally egregious court opinion in 1973, is incomprehensible.
Justice Thurgood Marshall was among seven justices who voted for and helped craft the monumental Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973. While many are praising this move as a step in the right direction to honor Thurgood Marshall, the first black member of the United States Supreme Court, we cannot blindly ignore that this man denied basic human rights to an entire group of equally marginalized persons - the preborn.
Thurgood Marshall pioneered for the personhood of black Americans, only to deny it to his preborn brothers and sisters.
Matt Sande, Pro-Life Wisconsin’s Legislative Director remarked, “Our nation, regrettably, once considered black Americans as semi-persons. With the U.S. Supreme Court’s twin rulings in 1973, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, history cruelly repeated itself with devastating consequences. The court fundamentally denied the protection of personhood to those most in need of it - our tiny preborn brothers and sisters. To be sure, the central premise of Roe is that the preborn child is NOT a person within the meaning of the law, very much like that of the Dred Scott decision.”
Since the Roe v. Wade opinion on January 22, 1973, over 60 million innocent human beings have suffered violent deaths at the hands of abortionists all throughout America, and the preborn still are waiting for the legal recognition of their right to equal protection under the law.
There will be no justice outside of the womb, until we recognize the inherent dignity of every child in the womb.
It is a travesty that the House has chosen to simply trade one injustice for another. The decisions of both Dred Scott v. Sandford and Roe v. Wade are grievous marks upon our history which demand our response. We must ardently seek to end this injustice and uphold the dignity of every human person, born and preborn.
*Wisconsin Representatives Mike Gallagher, Bryan Steil, Mark Pocan, Ron Kind, and Gwen Moore voted in favor, while Representatives Glenn Grothman and Tom Tiffany voted against. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, who has been mourning the death of his wife, was not present for the vote. Read the bill here.