Well, over the weekend, I had to change today’s story completely. I was planning a wonderful story of how happy I was to arrive in Scotland again on Friday June 24th for our annual summer adventure into the Highlands of Scotland.
Sue and I left behind the humidity and heat of south Alabama (104 degrees) on Thursday June 23rd, and arrived in Inverness, Scotland the next afternoon. We were so happy to put on sweaters in the 59-degree breezes. Summer travel to the north of Scotland is my greatest joy, especially when accompanied by my Sue. I was humming “Oh Happy Day” as we headed north to Brora.
Our rented apartment was not ready until Saturday, so our first night was planned with Barrie Fairns, an amazingly gracious lady whose son Grant is our pastor when we come to Scotland. In fact, Grant picked us up at the airport for the one-hour drive north to Barrie’s comfortable home in the Scottish countryside. Her hospitality included dinner and a Scottish breakfast delight of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs!
But as we climbed into bed on Friday evening, Sue checked her phone for the latest news.
Roe v Wade had been overturned!!!! The happy day of return to Scotland had just become more than just a happy day- it was an historic day.
I will save the full story for another time, but for today, just the highlights of why the day was so happy.
I was elected to the Kentucky state Senate in 1990 almost entirely because people knew I would be a pro-life warrior. Since 1973, when Roe v Wade was sent down from the Supreme Court high, all efforts in the Kentucky legislature to pass common sense restrictions had failed.
All during the 1980’s, three common sense ‘pro-life’ bills (Parental Consent, Medical Regulation of Abortion Clinics and a reasonable Waiting Period) would pass the House and come to the Senate where the strategy was to “kill” the Bills by sending them to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
A sadly obedient Committee Chairman would refuse to hear the bills. This included a simple bill that required “Parental Consent” for a minor child to get an abortion. How could anyone oppose that? Well, some did.
And so when I arrived on the scene in 1992, it became obvious that once again the bills would be ‘killed’ in the committee where I was a Member. I was new enough and dumb enough to not say ‘okay’.
Instead, I found a passage in the Kentucky Constitution (adopted in 1891) which required that “every Bill shall be considered by a Committee”. I wondered aloud to a staff attorney if that meant what it said. He had never heard of it. The Constitution went on to say that “IF a committee refuses or fails to consider a bill within a reasonable time, any Member may discharge that bill to the floor of the Senate for a vote” (possibly not an exact quote since this is typed from memory of nearly thirty years ago). I asked the Senate staffers if any Senator had ever discharged a bill from a committee for the failure to consider a bill. They didn’t know what I was talking about. Research showed that since 1891, the answer was No. No one had ever tried to discharge a bill from Committee.
I decided to be the first. And the rest is history. I sued the entire Senate in 1992 when the Senate president refused to allow me to discharge the bill and call for a vote under the Constitution.
I will tell the story more fully at a later date, but suffice it to say, I became a part of Kentucky’s ‘pro-life’ history when all three bills became Kentucky law before I voluntarily left the Senate in 1998, keeping my vow to only serve two terms before returning to normal life. I kept my promise to be on the front lines of the battle.
But honestly, I never dreamed the day would come when Roe v Wade was overturned.
But now, on this happy day, the dream is a reality.
No more babies will be killed in the womb in “My Old Kentucky Home”. No more mothers will be traumatized by the evil of abortion and the trauma of killing their own baby.
June 24th, 2022 was indeed a happy day.
(I located in my laptop archives a transcript of my speech on the Senate floor when the ‘parental consent’ bill passed in 1994. Read full draft.)