On Jan 22, 1973, activist judges in the U.S. Supreme Court decided that human fetuses were the property of their mothers, to be disposed in any manner she chooses. I am posting some thoughts and reposting a video (below) in the hope that we can together work and pray to remove this scourge from our country.
First, I think it is helpful to compare abortion to slavery. William Wilberforce, in his fight to end the slave trade, made these remarks:
“Never, never will we desist till we … extinguish every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonor to this country.”
Joe Carter offers these thoughts:
“In order to win the moral argument we must begin by co-opting the language of the abortion movement. An unborn child is either part, person, or property: an intrinsic part of a woman’s body, a human person, or non-human property over which a woman has the right to dispose of as she chooses. Since the DNA of the fetus differs from the mother, it cannot be considered merely a part of her body. So it is either a person or property. If they deny it is a person, as they must since doing otherwise would concede their moral argument, then they must recognize the fetus as the property of the woman.
Abortion supporters will not want to accept this semantic shift. If pressed, though, they will have no logical alternative. Once is has been defined that the “right to choose” is a right to choose what can legally be done with one’s property, the moral force of the pro-choice movement will dissipate. The real choice will be between choosing a side that venerates the dignity of human life or one that devalues humanity in the same way that slavery did.
Recognizing the link between abortion and property rights is crucial. The inviability of property rights allowed slavery to exist in our country for centuries. Unless we recognize that the pro-choice movement is hiding behind the same “rights”, abortion is likely to be around just as long.”
Here is a graphic video showing the outcome of the abortion procedure:
Lastly, here’s an interview with Robert P. George, co-author along with Christopher Tollefsen of Embryo: A Defense of Human Life
JT: I know that you greatly object to the conclusions of Roe v. Wade from a moral standpoint, but I wonder if you could summarize some of the legal problems with it?
George: The legal problem with Roe v. Wade is simple: The Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate state laws prohibiting or restricting abortion lacks any basis in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution of the United States. The late John Hart Ely, a famous legal scholar who himself supported legal abortion as a matter of public policy, said that Roe v. Wade “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” The justices who manufactured a right to abortion in Roe violated and dishonored the very Constitution they purported to interpret by substituting their own moral and political judgments for those of the elected representatives of the people. Their ruling was a gross usurpation by the judiciary of the authority vested by the Constitution in the people themselves, acting through the constitutionally prescribed institutions of republican democracy. As dissenting Justice Byron White put it, Roe was nothing more than an exercise of “raw judicial power.” It was not merely an incorrect decision, but an anti-constitutional one.
Read the whole interview.
Marvin Olasky interviews Robert George and Chris Tollefsen.
Related: My post from last year on this occasion.