On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade. That same day, the Court also decided Doe v. Bolton. In Roe, the Court struck down a Texas abortion law. In Doe, the Court threw out the restrictions on abortion in a more liberal Georgia law. The combined result overturned the laws that restricted abortion in every state. It took 49 years to overturn, but tens of millions of abortions later the Supreme Court overruled Roe v Wade in the Dobbs decision on June 24, 2022.
In 1970, Norma McCorvey, under the pseudonym “Jane Roe,” filed a law suit challenging the Texas laws that criminalized abortion. The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court as the now-famous Roe v. Wade. The “Roe” of that case is described as a pregnant woman who “wished to terminate her pregnancy by an abortion ‘performed by a competent, licensed physician, under safe, clinical conditions’; that she was unable to get a ‘legal’ abortion in Texas. . . . She claimed that the Texas statutes were unconstitutionally vague and that they abridged her right of personal privacy. . . .”
The true story, as Norma McCorvey tells it, is more complicated. She describes herself as having been relatively ignorant of the facts of her own case, and claims that her attorneys simply used her for their own predetermined ends. They “were looking for somebody, anybody, to use to further their own agenda. I was their most willing dupe.” She had indeed become pregnant with her third child and sought to end her pregnancy, but she was not aware of all the implications of abortion or even what the term itself meant. “‘Abortion’, to me, meant ‘going back’ to the condition of not being pregnant.” She did not fully realize that this process would end a human life. She says that her attorney Sarah Weddington, rather than correcting her misconceptions, deliberately confused the issue: “For their part, my lawyers lied to me about the nature of abortion. Weddington convinced me, ‘It’s just a piece of tissue. You just missed your period.'” Another problem was that Norma claimed that her pregnancy was the result of a gang-rape, in order to present a more sympathetic picture. As she has since admitted, this was totally untrue.
Norma states that her actual involvement in the case was minimal. She signed the initial affidavit without even reading it, and “was never invited into court. I never testified. I was never present before any court on any level, and I was never at any hearing on my case . . . I found out about the decision from the newspaper just like the rest of the country.”
Norma never had an abortion. She gave her baby up for adoption.
“Back in 1973, I was a very confused 21-year-old with one child and facing an unplanned pregnancy,” McCorvey said. “I think it’s safe to say that the entire abortion industry is based on a lie…. I am dedicated to spending the rest of my life undoing the law that bears my name. You read about me in history books, but now I am dedicated to spreading the truth about preserving the dignity of all human life from natural conception to natural death.”
On February 18, 2017, Norma McCorvey passed away at the age of 69.
https://vimeo.com/49600976
As one of the most famous cases in United States history, Roe v. Wade is perhaps one of the least understood. The decision, in conjunction with Doe v. Bolton, underscored abortion as a constitutional right, and gave the green light to abortion-on-demand across the country. As a result, the U.S. Supreme Court single-handedly sanctioned the killing of 57 million preborn children through abortions decades following the decision on January 22, 1973. The impact of Roe, though weakening through a growing pro-life movement, lives on.
These two decisions expunged the Jeffersonian principle that all men are endowed by their Creator with the unalienable right to life (Declaration). It has opened the door to a host of Big Government programs and policies that have resulted in the wanton destruction of human life both in the United States and overseas. According to WHO, every year in the world there are an estimated 40-50 million abortions. It has created an entire industry whose express purpose for existing is the destruction of human life. It has desensitized the conscience and soul of America. Furthermore, it has forced men of decency and good will to finance–with their tax dollars–the unconscionable act of killing unborn children.
And once again, another Jeffersonian principle was eviscerated. He said, “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” The Roe and Doe decisions violate this principle in the most egregious manner possible.
The Supreme Court ruled that a restriction on abortion is a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects the right to privacy. Delivering the Court’s opinion in Roe, Justice Blackmun wrote, “This right of privacy … founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action … is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”
Even pro-abortion proponents admit that Roe is intellectually indefensible. Edward Lazarus, a former clerk to Blackmun, wrote,
“What, exactly, is the problem with Roe? The problem, I believe, is that it has little connection to the Constitutional right it purportedly interpreted. A constitutional right to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in constitutional text, history, or precedent.”
Blackmun claimed that a fetus isn’t a person within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. He noted that “the Constitution does not define ‘person’ in so many words.” The word “has application only postnatally.” He observed that state laws restricting abortion “are not of ancient or even of common-law origin.” The laws derive from changes “in the latter half of the nineteenth century.” So, the word person as used in the Fourteenth Amendment “does not include the unborn.”
Each of these arguments falls apart under scrutiny. First, the Constitution doesn’t define person, but the Constitution doesn’t define privacy either. The Supreme Court applied a double standard in Roe, arbitrarily giving the word person a narrow definition and the word privacy a broad definition in order to rationalize its decision to legalize abortion-on-demand. Second, if a fetus isn’t a person because the provisions of the Constitution don’t apply to a fetus, then infants aren’t persons either, because the provisions also don’t apply to infants. Or adolescents in some instances. Third, it’s irrelevant if state abortion laws were less restrictive in the past. Many laws were less restrictive in the past. And it’s irrelevant if state abortion laws originate from statutes not common-law. Many laws originate from statutes. Fourth, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868, abortion was already restricted by at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures, including the very Texas law the Supreme Court struck down in Roe. Or in other words, state or territorial laws restricting abortion were already recognized when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted: the Amendment wasn’t intended to overturn laws restricting abortion. Clearly, the Fourteenth Amendment has always included the “unborn” as “persons” entitled to Constitutional protection.
Despite the evidence, Blackmun ruled otherwise. Further, he claimed the state laws that restricted abortion were inconsistent with the position that a fetus is entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protection as a person. He challenged three features of the state laws: the exceptions allowing for abortion to save the mother’s life; the lack of penalties for the woman with respect to an abortion; and the difference in penalties for abortion compared to murder. If the fetus is a person, he argued, the state laws shouldn’t contain these features.
Blackmun overlooked the obvious. First, the Supreme Court accepts that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the right to life of an adult while also accepting that a right to take the life of an adult in self-defense exists. The same principle applies to a mother if the fetus is posing an imminent, physical threat to her life. Abortion laws, including the Texas law, simply recognized this accepted principle. Second, the lack of penalties for a pregnant woman reflect the widely-held view that a pregnant woman is also a victim of those who are willing to perform abortions and take advantage of her vulnerable situation. Third, the penalty for killing an infant in some states is also less than the penalty for murder, but the Supreme Court hasn’t legalized infanticide.
After deciding that a fetus isn’t a person, Blackmun dodged the main issue of Roe by claiming, “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”
What Blackmun didn’t disclose was that the Supreme Court knew the answer. The Court deliberately ignored the facts and misled the public. First, the question of when human life begins is neither one of philosophy nor theology; the question is one of science. Second, the medical community had already arrived at the consensus that human life begins at conception. In October 1971, a group of medical experts filed a brief of amicus curiae (advice to a court from a person or persons not a party to the case) to the Supreme Court. The brief showed conclusively that science (embryology, fetology, genetics, perinatology, all of biology) establishes that human life begins at conception. And not a single person or group refuted the brief.
Instead of reviewing the scientific facts, though, Blackmun undertook perhaps the most disingenuous endeavor of any Supreme Court Justice ever when delivering an opinion. He used nearly 4,000 words to review the history of human thought, informing the public that, among other things, the ancient Greeks and Romans didn’t offer much opposition to abortion. Blackmun failed to mention that, while permitting abortion, the ancient Greeks and Romans also engaged in human sacrifices, but in his defense, he probably wasn’t implying that we should also permit that practice today. Just abortion.
Because a fetus, Blackmun decided, is merely a “potential life.” But, while the states can’t override a woman’s “right to terminate her pregnancy,” the states have an “important and legitimate interest” in protecting the potential life, he ruled. This interest reaches a “compelling” point at viability, which is when “the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother’s womb.”
Blackmun’s argument is illogical and unjustifiable. A fetus inside the womb and an infant outside the womb are both still completely dependent on others for survival. The claim that one has the capability of meaningful life and the other doesn’t has no medical or legal basis.
In summary, Blackburn concluded that “the abortion decision in all its aspects is inherently, and primarily, a medical decision, and basic responsibility for it must rest with the physician.” Wrong. Abortion “in all its aspects” is the intentional killing of innocent human life, which isn’t a medical decision. And responsibility for it rests with the government, not the physician.
The late Dr. Bernard Nathanson, former abortionist and co-founder of the pro-abortion group NARAL, admitted that the number of women dying from back-alley and self-inflicted abortions was completely fabricated prior to the Roe v. Wade decision. Abortion proponents claimed that a million women were obtaining illegal abortions in the United States each year, and 5,000 to 10,000 women were dying as a result of back-alley abortions. However, as Nathanson said, the numbers were highly exaggerated to sway public opinion.
Nathanson wrote: “I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the ‘morality’ of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics? The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated [laws against abortion], and anything within reason that had to be done was permissible.”
The idea that abortion is a necessary components of women’s health is still engrained in public perception. What the media fail to mention are the countless women who have died as a result of botched abortions, and the many more who are emotionally and physically scarred from an abortion procedure. While many deaths by abortion are covered up – fatalities labeled as hemorrhaging or death by natural causes – pro-abortion backers push abortion as a safe procedure with little risks.
Our enemy in fighting abortion is not the abortionist, the courts or those who are advocating for abortion rights. Our enemy is the one who was a murderer from the beginning – Satan and the spiritual forces under his command.
Throughout history, certain pagan cultures have sacrificed human infants to demons as a part of a complicated ritual in return for favors asked of them. Few of those involved in abortion today are consciously engaging in child sacrifice, although that is precisely what abortion is – the sacrifice of a human life for the convenience or needs of others. In that respect, it is no less barbaric than the human sacrifice practiced to ensure, for example, a successful harvest. But beyond this, there is a spiritual, satanically inspired dimension that gives frightening realism to abortion’s identification with literal child sacrifice.
The Bible supports this idea as often we see a particular action viewed by God as something of a more overtly occultic nature. Rebellion is called witchcraft; immorality is likened to idolatry; hatred is a kin to murder – thus abortion is child sacrifice.
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