With the birth of every child, the world becomes new again. Within each
new infant lies enormous potentialpotential for loving, for learning,
and for making life better for others. But this potential must be nurtured.
Just as seeds need fertile soil, warm sunshine, and gentle rain to grow,
so do our children need a caring environment, the security of knowing they
are loved, and the encouragement and opportunity to make the most of their
God-given talents. There is no more urgent task before us, as a people and
as a Nation, than creating such an environment for America's children.
From a presidential proclamation for "National Children's Day,"
released by the White House, October 10, 1997, at 3:50 p.m. That same
day, at 4:30 p.m., the White House reported that Bill Clinton had vetoed
the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.
SALEM, Ore.A state commission is considering covering . . .
doctor-assisted suicide for low-income residents under the Oregon health
plan. The plan covers about 350,000 Oregonians...
UPI wire story, December 14, 1997
The preceding quotes provide snapshots of a civic culture that has
lost its moral anchor: The nation's president engages in the most cynical
hypocrisy as he admonishes us to nurture children while, 40 minutes later,
he protects the "right" to kill them by a procedure that is four-fifths
infanticide and one-fifth abortion. A commission in the state of Oregon
is actually considering doctor-assisted suicide as a health care option
for the poor. And there is no public outcry, no widespread condemnation.
What has become of America, the shining city on the hill? What happened?
"Choice" happened.
While the Supreme Court cannot be blamed alone for this state of
affairs, it certainly gave the cultural decline a decisive downward push
when, 25 years ago, it legalized abortion on demand.
Through Roe v. Wade, in combination with Doe v. Bolton's broad
definition of "health," the Court created a virtually unlimited
right to abortion on demand. Reviewing the situation, the Senate Judiciary
Committee on June 7, 1983, concluded, "Thus, no significant legal barriers
of any kind whatsoever exist today in the United States for a woman to obtain
an abortion for any reason during any stage of her pregnancy."
No one can argue that the Supreme Court's radical ruling simply reflected
the majority opinion within the public at the timeor even now. (Unfortunately,
due to the major media's consistent misrepresentation of the abortion decisions,
many people still believe either that the Court legalized abortions only
for serious medical reasons or that the right to abortion is limited to
the first trimester.)
Roe v. Wade has made the child in the womb a nonperson, without rights,
until the moment after a "wanted" delivery. The unborn
child lacks even the constitutional protection enjoyed by the worst criminal.
Unlike the criminal, the victim of "reproductive choice" doesn't
get a proper trial before the execution.
Ironically, Justice Blackmun, the author of Roe's majority opinion,
wrote in a dissent in 1994 he would no longer "coddle the court's delusion"
about the fairness of capital punishment and he was convinced "that
the death penalty, as currently administered, is unconstitutional."
Blackmun's own "delusions" and faulty legal reasoning in Roe
were immediately pointed out, but to little effect. For example, the late
Archibald Cox, Harvard law professor and Watergate special counsel, observed
that "[n]either historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded
that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution."
Yet, the legal profession, for the most part, accepted the Court's horrendous
mistake, and the other two branches of government simply yielded to the
Court's "exercise of raw judicial power."
It wasn't much better on the medical front. When Dr. Bernard Nathanson wrote
in Aborting America, "I was pleased with Blackmun's conclusions....
I could not plumb the ethical or medical reasoning that produced the conclusions.
Our final victory had been propped up on a misreading of obstetrics, gynecology,
and embryology," he expressed what was obvious to any reasonably informed
physician. Yet, abortion is now a lucrative "elective procedure,"
done 1.3 million times a year. (Dr. Nathanson was a co-founder of NARAL,
then the National Association for Repeal of Abortion Laws, now the National
Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. He has since become a leading
figure in the right-to-life movement.)
Blackmun's judicial slight of hand was preceded, initiated, and followed
by lies and falsehood. For example, Dr. Nathanson writes (Aborting America,
1979, p. 193), "How many [maternal] deaths were we talking about when
abortion was illegal? In N.A.R.A.L. ... when we spoke of [statistics] it
was always `5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.' 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 the way to correct it with honest
statistics?"
Now we also know that dishonesty and deception were at the roots of both
Roe and Doe: Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) lied when she
claimed to have been raped (the stated reason for demanding the right to
an abortion), and Sandra Bensing (Mary Doe) did not even want an
abortion. McCorvey and Bensing were shamelessly used by the "movement"
and then pretty much discarded.
Since then, there has been a continuous series of widely propagated falsehoods.
Last year, for example, Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National
Coalition of Abortion Providers, had to admit that he "just went out
there and spouted the party line" when he dishonestly denied that partial-birth
abortions were done mostly on healthy women and healthy babies and occurred
by the thousands. As the evidence against him and his cohort mounted, he
admitted, "I lied through my teeth." Astonishingly, many media
mavens were actually shocked.
The legacy of Roe v. Wade has been exactly what pro-lifers predicted
25 years ago. Truth became the first victim. Then life itself became worthless.
It became inevitable that a clueless state commission would explore assisted
suicide as a health care option for the poor. Fortunately, the fight over
partial-birth abortions has permanently changed the terms of the debate.
We made pro-abortionists defend the indefensible. They couldn't do it. We
are right and they are wrong, dead wrong.
So in the end we shall overcome!