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Our View: Trump’s first major decision

Forty-four years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the Roe v Wade decision that set the nation’s policy to legalize abortion throughout the United States. The policy may have been set by judicial fiat, but the national argument over abortion has been blazing ever since. Across America today, pro-life advocates will be gathering, many of them in churches and cathedrals, to pray for an end to this policy and to pray for the 58 million or so lives that have been lost to abortion.

This year, their prayers have a glimmer of being answered. President Donald Trump was inaugurated Friday, and his first major decisions should be to nominate a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Trump’s appointment will be a conservative, no doubt, which will restore the court to its 5-4 conservative balance, but there could be two or even three more vacancies on the court in the next few years. If he is successful in appointing more conservatives, the scales could tip toward the overturn Roe v Wade, and at least throw the abortion decision back to the states.

That is why the Women’s March on Washington was held, to protest Trump’s ability to change the character of the court. And that is why millions more men and women will be gathering today to demand an end to the nation’s abortion on demand policy.

Nothing Trump may do in his first term will have more impact than the selections he makes to filling the Supreme Court’s vacancies.

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