Op-Eds

The First Amendment provides broad free speech protections to healthcare professionals, including the right of professionals to decide “what not to say.”[i] These protections, however, are not unlimited. When a physician’s First Amendment right not to speak is implicated as part of the practice of medicine, it is “subject to reasonable licensing and regulation by the […]

Clarifying and settling the law are among the most important responsibilities of the Supreme Court in the American constitutional system, and something the Court is frequently called on to do. “Ultimately it is this Court’s responsibility to clarify the scope of its own holdings,” as Justice William Brennan said more than a quarter of a century ago. It […]

What do you have on your walls? As I look around my office, I can see my law degree, signs I have carried in protests and rallies to defend life, and most importantly, pictures of my precious children. What you choose to hang on your walls tells the story of who you are and what […]

With the re-institution of a comprehensive, pro-life policy that blocks the use of taxpayer dollars to pay for overseas abortions, the United States stands as a beacon of pro-women health policy this International Women’s Day. One of the first official acts of the Trump administration was to re-institute the “Mexico City Policy,” which bars nongovernmental […]

By Deanna Wallace This article originally appeared in Townhall on February 15, 2018. As we celebrate the 198th birthday of Susan B. Anthony, one of the Founding Mothers of American Feminism, conversations always arise regarding the true meaning of feminism. Just over a year ago, millions of American women took to the streets for the first ever “Women’s March.” […]

With just one year under his belt, it took an hour and twenty minutes for the president to reflect last week on our nation’s latest milestones in his State of the Union address — the third-longest address in the last 50 years. And while he did not directly address the critical issue of abortion, a […]

In 2007, for the first time since 1973, five Supreme Court justices expressed grave concern with late-term abortions, in a case called Gonzales v. Carhart, and upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Numerous lawyers and elected officials read the Supreme Court’s decision and thought the Justices were serious. So, since then, 21 states have enacted a prohibition […]

Part of the problem that Republicans are having in Congress is that too many of them seem to expect perfect or permanent laws. Virtually all legislation is provisional. Nations live with provisional governments and provisional treaties. They deal with current conditions. They are temporary, with the expectation that they will change. Some laws should change when conditions do. This is […]

“I don’t feel sure about having a child.” With these words, “Jane Doe,” an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant, could have been speaking for millions of women facing pregnancy and childbirth. Instead, she spoke them as the epicenter of a national court battle that ended yesterday with her abortion somewhere in south Texas. Americans United for Life is […]

By Deanna Wallace Originally published in Townhall, October 16, 2017. One hundred and one is a big number, but 328,348 is even bigger- that’s the number of abortions done by Planned Parenthood in 2016. As Planned Parenthood celebrates its 101st birthday, it’s important to remember that because of Planned Parenthood, there are 328,348 children that will never celebrate their […]

When I was a child, I thought I could count the stars. I didn’t have the patience to do it, of course, but I figured that anyone with a good telescope and a lot of time on his hands could methodically tally them up. It wasn’t until years later, as a grown man, that I […]

By Deanna Wallace Originally published in the Independent Journal Review, on October 5, 2017. Saturday marked the 41st anniversary of the passage of the Hyde Amendment, which codified our nation’s preference for childbirth over abortion when it comes to taxpayer dollars. That means that 41 years ago, Congressman Henry Hyde saved my life. Recent research estimates that the Hyde […]

The latest locomotive of so-called constitutional inevitability, physician-assisted suicide, has been derailed at least temporarily in the last two state supreme court decisions addressing that asserted “fundamental right.” This month, the New York Court of Appeals – New York’s high court – unanimously rejected an effort by activists to impose the practice there by judicial […]

This summer, Chile legalized abortion for the first time since 1989. The legislation, slated to take effect in January 2018, legalizes abortion in cases of “risk to the mother’s life,” “fetal malformation incompatible with life,” and rape. The scope of these conditions — how they will be applied — remains to be seen. A case testing the […]

Lobbyists and in-house mouthpieces masquerading as unbiased analysts often try to infiltrate political discourse. The practice is so common that it’s a TV trope—fans of “Mad Men” watched the quintessential example in the show’s verbal sparring over the purported health benefits of smoking. In the real world, this behavior can be devastating. As U.S. District […]

By Deanna Wallace Originally published in The Washington Examiner on June 4, 2017. Over the past week, Planned Parenthood and their allies have been lamenting the fact that Planned Parenthood of the Heartland will be closing four clinics in Iowa, blaming the closures on an appropriations bill signed by Governor Terry Branstad, which defunds the abortion provider. […]