Tomi Lahren’s Perverse Obsession With Death

Keep your rosaries off my ovaries!  This week, Fox News pundit Tomi Lahren delivered a variation of this tired pro-abortion reaction to millions of fans and viewers. Lahren suggests that pro-life conservatives would favor what she calls a “religious judicial activist” over a “constitutional conservative” (read: Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, whom pro-lifers by and large support). In three separate appearances this week, Lahren has belied ignorance of the pro-life position, conservatism, and the judicial branch of government. It’s time to set the record straight.

Lahren campaigns for a purely secular shade of conservatism that starkly decouples the right to life from the rights to liberty and property.  Lahren first ingratiated herself with the abortion movement in 2017 when she announced to the fawning cast of The View that she is “pro-choice.” Since then, she has spoken repeatedly doubled down on her deadly pro-abortion position, using President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court as her latest stick with which to beat pro-life conservatives. “Pressing for a Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade would be a huge mistake,” Lahren insisted Monday.

Lahren argues that “government regulation” has no place in abortion. Expounding on these comments on Tuesday, she said, “My problem is with some of my fellow conservatives who have put it out there that we are coming for Roe v. Wade.  That is a mistake because we are … implying that we are sending a justice to the bench to carry out religious judicial activism, which is a mistake and is unconstitutional.” Lahren went so far as to express that supporting a nominee because of his willingness to reexamine Roe was akin to “spit[ting] on the Constitution.”

Lahren evidently has not followed her own line of reasoning back to 1973, when seven judicial activists on the Supreme Court ruled an unconstitutional right to abortion into existence—the precise activity Lahren claims to abhor. “Let the churches, the nonprofits, and the community groups step in,” Lahren chides, “not almighty Uncle Sam.” If Lahren had read Roe at any point before opining on it, she would no doubt comprehend that the decision is one of the most glaring instances of Uncle Sam usurping federalism in American history. Metaphorically spitting on the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Roe sacrificed states’ rights on the altar of Big Government expressly to enshrine the right to kill an entire class of innocent human beings. By her own logic, Lahren should be taking aim at Roe, not the Americans hoping to overturn it.

Compounding her misguided fears about federal overreach, Lahren seems to think her “fellow conservatives” are careening toward theocracy vis-à-vis their desire that justices reconsider Roe.  “Supreme Court justices shouldn’t legislate their religious views from the bench,” says Lahren. Indeed, Lahren appears convinced that only religious principles would compel an American to oppose abortion or to seek pro-life laws. This is breathtaking ignorance for someone who uses her national platform to critique the pro-life position. The syllogism uniting the pro-life movement—which is comprised of religious and secular activists alike—is simple: “The preborn are indisputably human. It’s wrong to kill innocent humans. Therefore, abortion is wrong.” For Lahren look at the pro-life movement and see anti-American religious zealotry is either willful myopia or blatant disinterest in her opponent’s position.

“I understand the passion behind the pro-life movement,” Lahren assures her audience as she simultaneously lambastes pro-lifers. But if Lahren did understand the passion behind the pro-life movement, there would be no antipathy toward our intention of upending Roe. What Lahren fails to grasp—and we must recognize this misstep if we hope to prevent other young conservatives from making it—is that the freedoms and rights conservatives uphold are wholly incompatible with the license to kill codified by Roe. Without the right to life—the right not to be violently and barbarically killed within the confines of a mother’s womb—there is no foundation upon which to defend or exercise any other right. Roe is the antithesis of everything—everything—conservatism represents.

What the pro-life movement has to offer the young conservative, on the other hand, is a firm foundation on which to construct a solid ideology. The pro-life worldview holds that every human being has inherent value and a right to life that transcends the grasp of the governing system—it cannot be given or stolen by the government. This view of the human person lends itself to a political philosophy that recognizes individual autonomy, personal responsibility, and the right to due process of law. The moment the government assumes the license to determine which classes of humans have a right to life is the moment we devolve into a system that cannot be reconciled with conservatism.

So, Tomi, yes: we are coming for Roe. We’re coming for it with conviction and determination. We’re coming for it on behalf of the one in three members of your generation and mine who aren’t here because judicial activism had its diabolical way in 1973. It’s time for the Supreme Court of the United States to recommit itself to the Constitution, and that begins with overturning Roe.