Forty Years After Roe v. Wade

    Today marks the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the controversial Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion throughout the United States. In many ways it was a watershed event, a turning point in our nation's culture and mores. It changed, perhaps forever, what we are as a nation.
    The crusade for access to legal abortion is a cornerstone of the modern feminist movement. Feminists see it as a women's rights issue, a matter of "reproductive freedom." The theory is that if women are to achieve economic equality with men, they must be able to pursue careers without interference from unwanted pregnancies. Thus access to abortion is a necessary part of individual freedom and self-determination.

Berthe Morisot, The Cradle

    There is, however, the nettlesome moral question about the life within the womb. In days gone by this would have been thought of as a "baby," the mother's child, and it was the woman's destiny and privilege to care for that child and raise it to maturity. Might not abortion involve the taking of an innocent human life?
    Feminist writers have a variety of semantic dodges to evade the obvious difficulty. The fetus is not a human being; it is only a "potential" human being. Or, even worse, it is only a clump of cells. And besides, it is inside the woman's body, an imposition on her, disrupting her life against her will. She has a right to control what goes on inside her own body, does she not?
    All of which misses the point. If the woman carries the pregnancy to term, a human being is born. At what point did it become human? What differentiates it five minutes after it was born from what it was five minutes before it was born? The mere change in physical location? Its dependency upon the mother? Isn't the newborn still dependent upon the mother for its care? Isn't this still an imposition? Why not infanticide? The feminist cannot answer these questions, but to her none of it matters. It is the woman's rights that are at issue, her need for "reproductive freedom."
    What this amounts to is nothing less than a massive cultural shift. For centuries the western world believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with taking innocent human life. This belief, in turn, was rooted in something deeper, a belief that we live in a rationally ordered universe that was created and governed by a Supreme Being. That Supreme Being has given us a moral law, and among the precepts of that law is the commandment "Thou shalt not kill." Human life was created in the image of God and is therefore sacred. No one is allowed to take it at will.
    The Supreme Court decision, then, was a repudiation of one of the basic pillars of western civilization. "Enlightened" progressive thinkers now call the older viewpoint an "outdated morality."
    The underlying assumption of modern feminist thought is that we exist in an impersonal universe as autonomous individuals, and that it is up to us to determine our own destinies. Abortion, indeed all of morality, becomes a matter of "personal choice." There are no moral absolutes. Feminism is nothing less than nihilism in a skirt and blouse.
    Martin Luther King, Jr. was the end of an era; Roe v. Wade was the beginning of another. We have entered a starkly different world – an amoral world of radical individualism. Or perhaps we should say, we have reentered the old world, the pre-Christian world, the world that existed for thousands of years before the Advent of Christ. It was a harsh and cruel world, a world of brute force and ruthless tyranny, a world of cruelty, barbarity and oppression.
    "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, and it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart" (Gen. 6:5,6). 

For an analysis of the Supreme Court's decision, click on this link:
Should Abortion be Legal? 
For an example of a Feminist "Pro-Choice" argument, click on this link:
Jill Filipovic on Roe v. Wade 
For a doctor's perspective on abortion, click on this link:
Ron Paul on abortion 

Should Abortion be Legal?

Roe v. Wade (1973) will surely go down in history as one of the most infamous decisions ever made by the U.S. Supreme Court. It was marked by a strained, if not to say tortured exegesis of the Constitution, and led to a morally outrageous conclusion.

In Roe the court took up the question of the constitutionality of state anti-abortion laws. The case basically involved two separate questions: 1) Is the life of an unborn child protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and 2) Does the Constitution grant a woman the right of privacy which includes the right to have an abortion? On the surface one might have thought that the case would have been an easy one to decide. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments explicitly forbid the taking of anyone's "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." On the other hand there is no mention of abortion anywhere in the Constitution at all. If it can be demonstrated that an unborn child is a living human being, then surely its life must be protected by the law.                    

Surprisingly, the court arrived at the exact opposite conclusion. What made the decision so bizarre is that the court took two completely different approaches to answer the two questions. On the first question they took a very narrow, legalistic approach: an unborn child is not a legal "person," and therefore is not included in the Fourteenth Amendment protections. On the second question they took the exact opposite approach, interpreting the Constitution in a very broad, expansive manner: the right of privacy, which is not spelled out anywhere in the Constitution, supposedly includes the right to have an abortion. Mr. Justice Blackmun, writing for the majority, admitted that a generalized right of privacy was not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the document, but he thought it might be implied in any one of a number of different provisions. But whatever it was and wherever it was, he was sure that it included the right to have an abortion. One cannot help but wonder if the outcome was dogmatically contrived: the justices found in the Constitution what they wanted to find.    

    In a sense we do hope that the Constitution does at least imply a right to privacy, but the right to privacy does not include the right to commit a crime. You do not have the right to kill your mother-in-law, even if it is done in the privacy of your own home. The right of privacy merely protects you against unreasonable searches and seizures.

    Perhaps the most disturbing feature of Roe v. Wade is the tacit implication that there is no longer any sanctity to human life. Mr. Justice Blackmun asserted that "we need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins," and then went on to argue that the State of Texas may not, "by adopting one theory of life," override the rights of a pregnant woman. Thus he tacitly admitted the possibility that life might begin at conception, but argued that it does not matter if it does. The unborn child still does not have a right to life. The sanctity of human life perished on that cold, wintery day in January, 1973.

    Each year almost a million legal abortions are performed in the U.S.*

    What does God think about all of this? One clue is what He thought of the ancient Canaanites. One of the reasons He condemned them was because of a practice connected with the worship of a deity named Molech. The worship of Molech involved human sacrifice, specifically by making children pass through a fire. What God told Israel about this practice was instructive.

    First of all, the practice had the effect of polluting or defiling the land. When Cain slew Abel God said to him: "The voice of your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground. So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand" (Gen. 4:10,11; NKJV). And so it was with regard to the Canaanites. "For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants" (Lev. 18:25).

    Secondly, this and other like practices are called "abominations" (vv. 26,27,29,30). An "abomination" is something that God considers loathsome or detestable. Nowadays we might say that it is something that "grosses you out." It is an offense that is particularly flagrant and serious.

    Child sacrifice was a barbaric and inhumane practice, something that runs counter to the natural sympathy that should exist between parent and child. God made it clear that Israel was to live by a different standard. Leviticus 19, which falls right in the middle of God's indictment of the Canaanites, contains exhortations to regard the poor, the deaf, the blind, the elderly and the foreigner. In a word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (v. 18).

    The fate of the Canaanites raises some disturbing questions about the possible fate of America. If God regards abortion as a moral outrage, and if our destiny is ultimately in His hands, it bodes ill for the future. All around are signs of impending doom: mired in foreign wars, sinking beneath a mountain of debt, a crumbling family structure, even erratic weather patterns and appearance of invasive species, we show every sign of a civilization in decline. Could it be that God is telling us something?

 

*estimated annual average for years 2001-2006=985,685