When it comes to pro-life votes, U.S. Senator Bob Casey, Jr. has entered the “Hall of Shame.”
The son of the late Pennsylvania pro-life hero, Gov. Robert Casey, Sr., has voted not once, not twice, but three times against the pro-life position in critical votes in the U.S. Senate this year, according to National Right to Life’s highly-respected pro-life voting scorecard.
His votes add up to a whopping 0 percent pro-life voting record in 2017.
This from a man who claims he is pro-life—even while he promotes Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion operation, which commits more than 320,000 abortions annually.
In fact, today (Friday), Planned Parenthood Advocates of PA tweeted a photo of a rally they were attending in the Pennsylvania state Capitol which prominently featured–guess who?– Senator Casey.
The rally claimed to be promoting health care. However no matter how often and how loudly PPFA argues otherwise, abortion is not health care.
Sen. Casey voted against legislation nullifying pro-abortion President Barack Obama’s parting gift to Planned Parenthood. In recent years, several states receiving Title X family planning grants have opted to direct those funds to county health departments, community health centers, or other types of providers, in preference to organizations engaged in objectionable activities, such as Planned Parenthood, a mega-marketer of abortion.
At the eleventh hour of his administration. Obama’s Department Heath and Human Services issued a rule designed to prevent states from redirecting Title X funds away from unsuitable organizations such as Planned Parenthood.
Thankfully, the nullification of the pro-abortion Title X rule passed Congress and was signed into law by pro-life President Donald Trump—no thanks to Bob Casey.
Casey voted again contrary to the pro-life position of National Right to Life and the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation (an NRLC affiliate) when he voted the wrong way to allow filibusters for Supreme Court nominations. And then he hit the trifecta by voting against the confirmation of the highly-qualified and esteemed Neil Gorsuch as Supreme Court justice. Again, Justice Gorsuch safely made it to the High Court, again with no help from Casey.
One political observer noted that Senator Casey appears to be positioning himself as the next Elizabeth Warren, the pro-abortion Massachusetts politician who has also scored a 0 percent pro-life voting record this year.
Senator Warren should not be Casey’s role model. His father should be—a man whose name is immortalized in the U.S. Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
While the case failed to result in an overturn of the tragic Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, it did uphold most of the landmark Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act. That law, which has certainly stood the test of time, among other things provided for informed consent, 24-hour waiting periods for abortion, and bans on late-term abortions and sex selection abortions.
Legal scholars have also noted that Planned Parenthood v. Casey ushered in a new era of greater legal protection for pre-born children and their mothers, with state after state passing law after law. Those protective laws have helped to reduce the nation’s abortion totals to their lowest levels since the 1973 Roe ruling.
Sen. Casey routinely writes letters to constituents claiming he is pro-life. But his voting record does not back up those assertions. Neither do the valentines he routinely sends to the country’s biggest abortion promoter and provider, Planned Parenthood.
In our office is a signed copy of Robert Casey Sr.’s book, Fighting for Life. In this classic work, Casey Sr. recalled the day the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Outside the courtroom, Casey Sr. faced an army of television cameras and microphones. Writing of that moment, he said, “I tried to lay aside all the familiar arguments in the debate and ask the one question I believed to be at the heart of the issue: ‘In this debate, who speaks for the child? Today I’ve come to say that Pennsylvania speaks for the child.’”
But the son is no longer speaking for Pennsylvania, and his votes in the 115th Congress do not speak for the child, nor for the mother who spends a lifetime grieving a child lost to abortion.
Chelsea Garcia is a political writer with a special interest in international relations and social issues. Events surrounding the war in Ukraine and the war in Israel are a major focus for political journalists. But as a former local reporter, she is also interested in national politics.
Chelsea Garcia studied media, communication and political science in Texas, USA, and learned the journalistic trade during an internship at a daily newspaper. In addition to her political writing, she is pursuing a master's degree in multimedia and writing at Texas.
