Benedictine College has awarded honorary degrees to three female pro-life attorneys for their work on the case that overturned Roe v. Wade.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Denise Burke, Kellie Fiedorek, and Erin Hawley from from the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) each received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree on Saturday, May 17, because of their work that led to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
- The three attorneys worked to draft and/or defend Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, which ultimately led to the end of Roe v. Wade at the U.S. Supreme Court in Dobbs. That decision was released in June 2022.
THE DETAILS:
“It is now my pleasure to present our honorary degree recipients,” said Benedictine College president Stephen D. Minnis as he introduced the attorneys. “We’re pleased to recognize and welcome into the community of Ravens three wonderful women who have become known for their pro-life work, which led to the landmark Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe versus Wade and remove abortion as the law of the land.”
During his introduction, Minnis also stated, “These are brave women who have accomplished a lot for our nation and the most defenseless among us, the unborn,” adding that “Without these three women, millions of tiny voices would never be heard. We owe them a great debt of gratitude, and these Honorary Degrees are merely a symbol of our deep appreciation for their love of life and the law.”
THE BACKGROUND:
Live Action News previously spoke with all three attorneys regarding the “strategic process” of creating the law — the Mississippi Gestational Age Act — that would ultimately take down Roe.
Burke, Senior Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), worked both to draft the Gestational Age Act and to defend it. “It was a very strategic process in making sure that we had a law that was supported by the evidence and was supported by the legitimate state interest that the Mississippi state legislature would have to protect women and their unborn children knowing that this law would be challenged and it was our hope that it would ultimately reach the Supreme Court,” she told Live Action News in 2022.
Fiedorek, Senior Counsel and Government Affairs Director for ADF, also worked to draft and defend the Gestational Age Act. She told Live Action News that the viability standard used to force states to keep abortion legal through six months of pregnancy under Roe was arbitrary and unworkable:
The Supreme Court had said a state could protect life if it was advancing interest in protecting unborn life, in supporting and advancing women and women’s health and well-being, and efforts to work to protect the integrity of the medical profession. And so the science that we had at the time we worked to draft that law showed a couple of things.
One, with regards to the unborn child, we had science that clearly showed at 15 weeks, no question, the unborn child can feel pain. Its heart had already begun to beat. It had fingers and toes, that they could hiccup, they could taste things their mother was eating. There were all of these markers in terms of fetal development that were very clear at 15 weeks where it made sense for the state to recognize the child’s humanity.
Fiedorek added:
In addition, the 15-week mark is squarely in the second trimester, where again, the science is so important when defending a law in court. The risk of death to a woman goes up 2000% once she hits her second trimester and has an abortion. So for those reasons, those heightened risks bolstered the case for the state to protect life starting at 15 weeks. And then lastly, with regards to the medical profession.
The procedure that you have to use in an abortion second trimester and beyond is a particularly gruesome procedure with the D&E procedure tearing the baby apart limb from limb. Obviously, the medical profession takes an oath to do no harm, and the state had an interest in showing that doctors were put in a position to provide those kinds of procedures that take innocent life and significantly harm women as well.
Hawley, Senior Counsel to the appellate team at ADF, helped to defend the Gestational Age Act with her infant daughter Abigail in tow.
She previously told Live Action News, “When I was … asked to help with the case, it was a big lift. I had been working part-time and working on the case would require full time availability. In thinking through that decision it was so tangible and real to have Abigail with us in Mississippi and with me doing my work. It showed why Dobbs matters and why pro-life laws matter.”
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Attorneys Burke, Fiedorek, and Hawley helped to craft and/or defend Mississippi’s law protecting preborn children at 15 weeks (while still under Roe v. Wade) in the hope that it could be the impetus to take down Roe. They attacked Roe‘s viability framework, used biological fact to argue for the humanity of the preborn child, and noted that the state had a valid interest in protecting both women (at higher risk during a second-trimester D&E) as well as preborn children.
Their work was pivotal in toppling Roe, and allowed states the opportunity to pass protections for preborn children that were not possible under Roe.
