The Abortion Bans are the Story of Democratic Backsliding

If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. — Abraham Lincoln, 1838

In March 1916, Carolina Petrovitis, a mother of two small children, was in terrible pain following an illegal abortion when a local doctor sent her to the hospital. Three police officers soon arrived to question Carolina. With the permission of the hospital physician, hospitals being then required to cooperate in abortion investigations, Sgt. William E. O’Connor…