Should Roe v. Wade Be Overturned?

             Roe v. Wade became the law in all fifty states on January 22, 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute that banned abortion. The Texas statute made it a crime to perform an abortion except in cases where the mother’s life was endangered.

The Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion across the nation continues to divide Americans today. There are three findings from Roe v. Wade that are kept today: (1) “Women have the right to abort pre-viability without undue interference from the state.” (2) “The state may restrict abortion post-viability.” (3) “The state has a legitimate interest in protecting woman’s health and life of the fetus.” 

The U.S. Supreme Court passed Roe v. Wade nearly fifty years ago before much of the current medical technology was developed. The sonogram was first used for clinical purposes in 1956 in Glasgow, Scotland, and was routinely used in hospitals there. However, British hospitals did not use it much until the 1970s, and American hospitals did not widely use it until “well into the 1970s.” 

My children were born between 1972 and 1985 without the use of sonograms. I remember hearing about sonograms with my fourth or fifth child simply because my friend’s doctor had one in his office. I was never offered a sonogram or had need for one, but I believe that they were more widely used in Alaska by the time that my last child was born. Most of my grandchildren were introduced to me by sonogram.

Sonograms give doctors and parents a way to look into the womb to see the child or children before they are born. These medical miracles show that unborn children are human beings, and I have long believed that they would be instrumental in ending abortion on demand. That time may be the present.

According to Mary Margaret Olohan, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear in October an abortion case titled Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Three Republican Senators – Josh Hawley (Missouri), Mike Lee (Utah), and Ted Cruz (Texas) – filed a brief in the case, and they asked the court to “revisit its rulings in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.” In doing so, they asked the court to “return questions of abortion legislation to the states and challenged the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence as unconstitutional.” In other words, they said that abortion is a decision that each state should decide. 

This status quo is untenable….

Where a legal doctrine has repeatedly failed to offer clarity – where it has proved unworkable in the past and will likely engender unpredictable consequences in the future – its existence constitutes an open invitation to judges to interpret it according to their own policy preferences, usurping the constitutional prerogatives of the legislature.

Roe and Casey should be overruled … and the question of abortion legislation should be returned to the states.

            This is the first time in my recollection that a case has challenged Roe v. Wade at the Supreme Court. At least, none has done so successfully. Olohan explained that Dobbs “deals with a 2018 Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks.” The law was challenged by Jackson Women’s Health Organization and struck down by the 5^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in December 2019. The State of Mississippi appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case. Olohan continued with her explanation:

An unborn baby is considered viable at 24 weeks, though medical intervention and a stay in the neonatal intensive care unit are usually required this early. Babies born before 23 weeks have a survival rate of about 5% to 6%, and analysis by Charlotte Lozier Institute medical experts found that unborn babies can feel pain as early as 12 weeks.

            Sonograms can detect a fetus about six weeks after the mother’s last menstrual period. Healthy pregnancies today usually involve two sonograms, one in the first trimester and the second in mid-second trimester. The sex of the child can usually be seen by the time of the second sonogram. Yet, abortion is legal up until the child is born.

            With the use of modern technology and modern medicine, much more is known today about the unborn baby than could be proven in 1973 when Roe v. Wade was passed. Now that it is obvious that an unborn baby is a human being and not just a blob of tissue and that unborn babies feel pain, it is time to revisit the law that legalizes killing of unborn babies for the convenience of their mothers.

Unborn Child Is a Person

            Apparently leftists knew that an abortion case was making its way through the court system and would eventually make it to the U.S. Supreme Court. That could have been the reason why there was so much madness at the circus known as the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing in the Senate. The case is not an abortion case, but it is a murder case that could mean trouble for Roe v. Wade.

            As reported by Bob Unruh, the case being tried in the Alabama Supreme Court came about because a man by the name of Jesse Phillips was charged with the murders of his wife and unborn child. Phillips claimed that he could not be sentenced for the death of an unborn child because the child was not a “person” under Alabama law.

            The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that a person can be punished for the death of an unborn child because that child is a “person” under the law. Justice Tom Parker called on the U.S Supreme Court to take another look at Roe v Wade, the 1973 law that gave mothers the “right” to kill their unborn babies. Justice Parker wrote the following in his special concurrence.

I write specially to expound upon the principles presented in the main opinion and to note the continued legal anomaly and logical fallacy that is Roe v. Wade…. I urge the United States Supreme Court to overrule this increasingly isolated exception to the rights of unborn children.

            Parker affirmed that in the Alabama court’s rationale, “unborn children are persons entitled to the full and equal protection of the law.” He also pointed out that Roe v. Wade “without historical or constitutional support, carved out an exception to the rights of unborn children and prohibited states from recognizing an unborn child’s inalienable right to life when that right conflicts with a woman’s `right’ to abortion.” Parked explained an “obvious truth” that all rational people know: “unborn children are people and thus entitled to the full protection of the law.”

            This case may or may not be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but other cases surely will be. Unruh reported that other judges have also ruled or made statements about unborn children being people. One such person is Justice Harry Blackmun, the man who wrote the majority opinion for Roe v. Wade.

[Blackmun] said the justices didn’t have the scientific evidence to determine if an unborn baby is a person, but “personhood” is the foundation of the case.

Blackmun wrote: “(If the) suggestion of personhood [of the preborn] is established, the [abortion rights] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14^th] Amendment.

            A lot has happened in the medical field since 1973. The most important development related to this case is ultra sound. With this and other modern inventions doctors can look inside of people and see what is going on there. They can see babies and count their fingers and toes, and they can do surgery on unborn babies. Because of all the medical advances, science has proven once and for all that an unborn child is a person with the unalienable right of life. It is way past time that the U.S. Supreme Court revisit the decision known as Roe v. Wade!

Abortion

Abortion has been in the news more than usual lately. President Barack Obama recognized and celebrated the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Thousands of abortion opponents rallied on the Mall on January 24 for their annual March for Life. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said that the abortion issue is "one of our highest legislative priorities." House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va) called the new Republicans in Congress the "biggest and the most pro-life freshmen class in memory." The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act was introduced in the House of Representatives last week and has about 160 sponsors. This bill would strengthen the U.S. ban on using taxpayers' money for abortion services as well as bar the District of Columbia from using its own money to pay for abortions. Another measure was introduced by Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R. NJ) to ensure that Obamacare does not allow funding for abortions. Conservatives are hoping for changes in abortion laws and practices. A Philadelphia doctor was accused of killing a woman during an abortion procedure and is suspected of killing hundreds of living babies over his 30-year career.

Abortion on demand has been legal throughout the United States since January 22, 1973, when the United States Supreme Court made the historic decision to overturn a Texas abortion law. This decision was based on the right of privacy and decreed that a woman with her doctor had the right to abort a baby in the early months of pregnancy with no restrictions; it also gave women the right to abort babies in later months with certain restrictions.

The plaintiff in Roe v. Wade was Norma McCorvey, and the defendant was Henry B. Wade, district attorney of Dallas County, Texas. McCorvey's attornies were Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee while the lawyers for the defendant were John Tolle, Jay Floyd and Robert Flowers. Justices in the majority on the case were Harry Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Chief Justice Warren Burger, William O. Douglas, Thurgood Marshall, Lewis Powell, and Potter Stewart. Those dissenting were William Rehnquist and Byron White.

Norma McCorvey wanted to remain anonymous when she sued for the opportunity to have an abortion. Her baby was born and given up for adoption more than two years before the case was decided; she gave up two other children for adoption. In a 1984 television interview, Norma McCorvey revealed that she is Jane Roe, the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, the most famous abortion case in U.S. history. In 1989 McCorvey joined in the pro-choice movement and gave a speech on Capital Hill before hundreds of thousands of people on April 9. In August 1995, she made an announcement: "I'm pro-life. I think I have always been pro life, I just didn't know it."

According to California Right to Life, the Roe v Wade decision in 1973 was not the beginning of abortion in mainstream society because the history of abortion goes back decades, centuries and millenniums. Abortion was present under Roman rule "[n]ot only [was] … abortion permitted; [but also] infanticide. The shriveled remains of exposed babies could be found in every countryside of the [Roman] Empire…." This culture was referred to by Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun in Roe v Wade: "Greek and Roman law afforded little protection to the unborn … Ancient religion did not bar abortion."

In their article entitled ROE v. WADE REPORT: A Look at Abortion's History, the California Right to Life organization stated that "Limited records indicate that early Americans used abortion as well." After giving several examples of abortion and infanticide, they stated, "But overall, in America's early years abortion was recognized as a negative phenomenon and an attack on human life."

Even though "the legal system increasingly recognized the sanctity of life," there were people with the belief that any extra children "must necessarily perish." Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, stated "The most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its members is to kill it." I am grateful that my parents chose life for all twelve of their children! I encourage you to read the complete article by California Right to Life.

It is interesting to me that the opponents to "pro life" activists call themselves "pro choice" instead of "pro abortion." They obviously want to change the discussion from killing babies to making sure women enjoy their right to privacy.

Kyle Ann Shriver wrote that "America committed herself to a Holocaust of unprecedented proportions" because Americans' "own hands carry the blood of more than 52 million innocent human beings. Deprived of life by the same evil that took the lives of slaves and all the Anne Franks. Our doctors have become killers. Our women have become clients for paid murder. And people who actually think of themselves as good stand up in public to defend this Holocaust."

I believe that Roe v. Wade needs to be overturned. It is a bad law and very much against the law of nature or nature's God: Thou shalt not kill. On the day that Roe v. Wade became the law of our land, I was about three months pregnant with my second daughter. I cannot imagine how empty my life would be without her - or any of my other children. I pity any woman who purposely kills her baby. Each woman who choses to have an abortion also chooses to cheat herself of many, many wonderful moments with her baby. I loved my children when they were babies, I loved watching them grow and develop, and I love being with my adult children!