Guest Post by Brett

Roe v. Wade Reflections (January 22, 2013 - 40th Anniversary)
by Brett Jones

“Every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity,” ...even the poorest of Americans should be secure, knowing that they are free and “equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.”

America has an obligation “to all posterity,” to ensure that children “know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.”

The task of our generation is “to make these words, these rights, these values ­ of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ­ real for every American.”
        

In light of the recent celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I thought I would begin my remarks about the 40th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade with several quotes by one of America's most famous African American leaders.  However, these words were not spoken by the great civil rights leader of happy memory, but were rather uttered by the most openly pro-abortion president of all time.  At his inaugural address on January 21, 2013, President Barack Obama spoke of equal rights for all Americans.  He spoke of making the right to life a reality for every American, yet he praises the 1972 court ruling that sounded a death knell for over a million Americans each year.  He spoke of dignity for the poorest Americans, yet turns his back on the poorest of the poor, the unborn derelict babies.  He spoke of ensuring that children know they are cared for, while these young Americans know only the brutality of being conceived in a country whose laws condone the slaughter of her most vulnerable and poorest members.

         Sadly, the leadership of the executive branch of our government supports laws that speak of individual rights, yet allows no rights to the unborn.  This leadership speaks of making abortion "safe, legal, and rare," yet in the United States, nearly one out of every four babies is aborted...hardly a rarity.  This leadership purports that the females in this country have the right to do what they want to with their lives, while over half a million females per year are not even allowed to live.

         Though recently we in America celebrated the life of a true champion of racial justice, the sobering reality is that over half of the babies aborted every year in this country are racial minorities.  While many sectors of the workforce are seeking to find ways to add more racial diversity in their companies, we as a country are killing off the next generation of diverse workers.  Yet our leadership lauds the court decision that 40 years ago allowed for the abomination of legal abortion in America.  The truth, however, was known by the great Martin Luther King Jr. when he wrote in a letter from the jail in Birmingham, Alabama that "an unjust law is no law."  Our laws must work toward justice, or they must be changed.

         How did we wade this far into the murky waters of contradiction?  What were the guiding forces that lead to this fatal decision made by the Supreme Court four decades ago?  According to David Garrow in his book Liberty and Sexuality, which explores the political and social influences that lead to the right to privacy decision in 1965, thus paving the way for the right to abortion, there were three main justifications of abortion: the large number of illegal abortions, the need for therapeutic abortions, and the right of women to make reproductive decisions.  I believe each one of these justifications relates directly to our president's desire to make abortion "safe, legal, and rare."

         Due to the large number of illegal abortions, abortion should be legalized:  Maternal deaths from "back alley" abortions have long been a justifying reason for the legality of abortion.  The Guttmacher Institute indicates that in the year before Roe v. Wade, 39 women died of complications brought about by abortion.  In 2009 the Center for Disease Control reported at least a dozen maternal deaths resulting from complications brought about by surgical abortion (not including the maternal deaths incurred as a result of chemical-based Plan B-style abortions).  It would seem that in spite of the legalization of abortion in 1973, abortions, though legal, are still far from safe.

         Women need legal abortion for therapeutic reasons:  The legality of abortion is often deemed as necessary due to the potential of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, or threatening the physical health of the mother.  However, these reasons for abortion consist of well less than 2% of all abortions according to a compilation of recent state studies and national surveys.  In other words, 98% of all abortions in America are elective with women citing various other reasons for aborting their baby.  As to the therapeutic nature of abortion that was used to justify its being legalized, forty years of dead babies and wounded mothers prove it to be anything but therapeutic.  In fact, a study that was done several years after Roe v. Wade (Badgley, 1977) showed that post abortive women are eight times more likely to visit a psychiatrist than their non-abortive counterparts.  Furthermore, 60% of post-abortive women will contemplate suicide while 80% will experience self-loathing (Reardon, 1987).  Post abortive women are twice as likely to abuse drugs and alcohol.  These abuses hit home not just for these mothers, but also for their families and loved ones.  A friend of mine's mother became an alcoholic after procuring an abortion due to a rape resulting in impregnation.  She later drank herself to death, leaving three children on this earth without a mother.  Another friend of mine supported his girlfriend's desire to abort their child, although he desperately wanted her to put the child up for adoption.  Their relationship dissipated months later and he had to drop out of school as a result of extreme mental anguish.  These are just two examples of the ‘therapeutic’ nature of legal abortion.

         Women have the right to make their own reproductive decisions:  Abortion advocates in the early 1970’s wanted legal abortion to allow women the right to make their own reproductive decisions.  Given the availability of artificial birth control, women needed abortion as a 'back-up' birth control for when their birth control would fail.  This approach was solidified and the connection between birth control and contraception was clarified in the 1992 Supreme Court decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey: 

Abortion is customarily chosen as an unplanned response to the consequence of unplanned activity or to the failure of conventional birth control. . .  For two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.

 In other words, women now rely on abortion as a safety net if their contraception should fail, or even as a form of birth control.  A 2001 Guttmacher Institute survey confirms this.  It found that 46% of abortions in America are procured by women who are not using contraception (in other words, abortion as a means of contraception), while 53% of abortions were sought by women using contraception.  Of that number 33% were from the correct use of contraceptives (contraceptive failure).  Given the common practice of intercourse with no intention of procreation and the reliance on abortion when contraception fails or as a form of 'contraception,' we can easily conjecture that abortion in America will never be "rare."  In fact, the more our leaders support the distribution of contraceptives and celebrate sex outside the covenant of marriage, abortion in our country will be as rampant as ever.

         So, what can we do to lower the abortion rate in America?  How can we prevent a million babies from being put to death each year?  First, we can work to promote sex as a beautiful sharing of love between a husband and a wife and as a true act of self-giving.  This requires promotion of abstinence outside of marriage and working toward the virtue of self-mastery.  This means a true respect for women and a true respect for sex as a marital gift instead of the use of another for one's self-gratification.  This means accepting children as a gift and the best natural resource our country could ever have.  This means offering vulnerable pregnant women resources for their babies instead of an 'easy' fix that they will have to live with for the rest of their lives.  This means making small economic sacrifices for a stronger future.  This means an America built on love instead of fear; on liberty instead of oppression; on life instead of death.        

"An unjust law is no law."  Our laws must work toward justice, or must be changed.  I wish we could ask the victims of abortion of the justice of Roe v. Wade.  I wish the 500,000 females aborted each year could speak to us about 'women's rights.'  However, these voices have been silenced by an unjust law.  We therefore must be the voice of these silent victims.  We must decry this injustice until all Americans are given the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  We pray that the day will soon come when Roe v. Wade is struck down and the tyranny of the right to abortion has been eradicated from America.  And when that days comes, because good will prevail, we can all join hands and thank God Almighty that from this yoke we are "free at last...free at last."