By Paul Stark

Justice Harry Blackmun
Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

Michael Stokes Paulsen, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas here in Minnesota, wrote for Public Discourse about Roe v. Wade and its consequences.

“After nearly four decades, Roe’s human death toll stands at nearly sixty million human lives, a total exceeding the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s purges, Pol Pot’s killing fields, and the Rwandan genocide combined. Over the past forty years, one-sixth of the American population has been killed by abortion. One in four African-Americans is killed before birth. Abortion is the leading cause of (unnatural) death in America.

“It is almost too much to contemplate: the prospect that we are living in the midst of, and accepting (to various degrees) one of the greatest human holocausts in history. And so we don’t contemplate it. Instead, we look for ways to deny this grim reality, minimize it, or explain away our complacency—or complicity.”

Paulsen discusses what Roe held, why constitutionally it was an “utterly indefensible” decision, and how morally its results are simply catastrophic. Below are some notable excerpts.

On what Roe actually did:

“The right created by the Supreme Court in Roe is a constitutional right of some human beings to kill other human beings. I do not mean for my description to be provocative, but simply direct—blunt about facts. One need not presume that the human fetus has a right not to be killed in order to recognize that, as a descriptive matter, Roe creates a right for one class of human beings to kill other human beings.”

On the constitutional basis for Roe:

If the U.S. Constitution actually protected such an extreme personal legal right to kill the human fetus, that would be troubling enough, but the trouble would be with the content of the Constitution. The further problem with Roe is that it has absolutely no basis in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution. No rule or principle of law fairly traceable to the text, discernible from its structure, or fairly derived from evidence of intention or historical understanding of an authoritative decision of the people, remotely supports the result reached in Roe. In terms of fair principles of constitutional interpretation, Roe is perhaps the least defensible major constitutional decision in the Supreme Court’s history.

“Roe’s reasoning, distilled to its essentials, is that the Constitution creates a ‘privacy’ right to abortion, on the premise that the right not ‘to bear’ a child is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. No serious constitutional law scholar thinks this is a plausible reading of the Due Process Clause. That clause forbids government to ‘deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.’ Without due process of law are crucial words. The Due Process Clause does not say that government never may deprive a person of life, liberty or property. It only says that government may not do so ‘without due process of law’—that is, arbitrarily, lawlessly, not in conformity with duly enacted laws and accepted procedures for their application.” [PS note: The government rightly deprives people of the “liberty” to murder, rape and steal.]

On Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which reaffirmed the constitutional right to abortion invented in Roe:

If Roe was radical, Casey was craven. A majority of the Supreme Court apparently believed that Roe was wrongly decided, fully understood the moral and human consequences of the decision, and deliberately adhered to it anyway. Stare decisis has never been thought required by the Constitution, before or since, Brown v. Board of Education (1954) famously repudiated Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) on the question of whether racial segregation was consistent with ‘equal protection of the laws.’ The Court has overruled scores of its own precedents. Indeed, it overruled two cases in Casey. Casey’s reaffirmation of Roe, in the name of stare decisis, was a sham—perhaps the most transparently dishonest major judicial decision since Dred Scott.”

On what makes Roe unbearable:

“Roe is a radical decision and a legally indefensible one. But what really makes Roe unbearably wrong is its consequences. The result of Roe and Doe has been the legally authorized killing of nearly sixty million Americans since 1973. Roe v. Wade authorized unrestricted private violence against human life on an almost unimaginable scale, and did so, falsely, in the name of the Constitution.”

On our response:

“Faced with this prospect, many of us—maybe even most—flee from the facts. We deny that the living human embryo is ‘truly’ or ‘fully’ human life, adopt a view that whether the embryo or fetus is human ‘depends,’ or can be judged in degrees, on a sliding scale over the course of pregnancy; or we proclaim uncertainty about the facts of human biology; or we proclaim moral agnosticism about the propriety of ‘imposing our views on others’; or we throw up our hands and give up because moral opposition to an entrenched, pervasive social practice is not worth the effort, discomfort, and social costs. The one position not on the table—the one possibility too hard to look at—is that abortion is a grave moral wrong on a par with the greatest human moral atrocities of all time and that we passively, almost willingly, accept it as such.”

Learn More: 

http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2014/01/the-unbearable-wrongness-of-roe-2

By Dr. Jean Garton

Long after time passes, it is often the little things that remain in a person’s memory. One of my favorite “little things” took place in a very big setting – Australia.

My friend, Molly Kelly, and I were there on a speaking tour when, one afternoon, driving to our next engagement, the sun was beginning to set. As I glanced out the car window I said, “Oh, look. Molly, there on that hill are those unusual trees I like so much, and with sunlight shining behind them they look like open fans or peacock tails.”

My artistic description did not impress Molly at all because, after a pause, she grunted and said, “They look like broccoli to me!” Two people looking at the same thing but seeing something different.

That is how we are about many topics–especially political or social issues. Fortunately, in most cases of “seeing” things differently, 56 million human beings don’t end up dead as they have in the case of abortion. Next week on the 41st anniversary of the legalization of abortion on demand, what some people see in the womb has led to a staggering destruction of human life, untold numbers of women experiencing guilt and pain, disenfranchised fathers and a coarsened view of human life at all stages.

Yet, on this 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the American people increasingly are “seeing” the abortion issue with a clearer vision. We can be more hopeful than ever that the youngest, most defenseless members of the human race will once again be protected by law from the moment of conception.

My involvement in the abortion battle began on the “choice” side back in 1968 when I found myself pregnant at 40. We already had three children and number four was definitely not on my agenda. “Every child a wanted child” claims the pro-choice slogan, and this child wasn’t.

The practical solution was an abortion. However, where I lived the State law prohibited abortion so I joined an abortion-rights group to help change the law. What changed, however, was that that unwanted pregnancy became a very wanted child.

I eventually became a convert to the pro-life position and, in 1973, found myself speaking at a U.S. Senate hearing because, as the old line says, “Once you see, you can’t unsee.”

However, there were a multitude of great and wise teachers along the way whose “little things” have encouraged, enlightened and energized me for the battle.

There was John Cardinal O’Conner, who responded to the charge against pro-lifers that unless we are feeding the hungry or housing the homeless we are hypocritical. He said: “You can be hungry but alive! You can be homeless but alive! You can be in a wheelchair but alive! You can be handicapped or injured or battered but alive! But you can’t be killed and be alive.” [1]

His response was a “little thing,” but it affirmed and strengthened my belief that to put one’s energy into simply keeping unborn babies alive is a natural, needful and noble work.

Then there was Ruth Bell Graham, wife of Billy Graham, speaking to a few of us at her home where she made a powerful point through the “little thing” of telling a story from the past.

There was a small village in Europe during World War I, she said, where all the men and boys were off to war. One day the townspeople saw the dust of the approaching enemy army. The women gathered their children, the old people collected their prized possessions and off they ran in the opposite direction to hide in the hills.

One little old lady, however, with a broom held high in her hand, ran out into the street in the direction of the oncoming army. “Crazy old lady,” shouted the fleeing villagers. “What good will a broom do against tanks and guns?” “Well,” she replied, “it might not do any good but at least they’ll know whose side I’m on.” [2]

It is a mighty and powerful broom we hold in our hand when we walk into a voting booth, when we witness to others about the sanctity of life, or when we financially and prayerfully support those on the front line of this battle. As President Ronald Reagan once said, “Evil is powerless when the good are unafraid.” [3]

A name not found among well-known pro-life warriors is Matthew Dulles de Bara whom I came to know only through national news reports.

The story told of a young couple bound for Disney World with their 3-year old in tow. A short time into the flight, the woman–7 months pregnant– went into labor. A flight attendant used the P.A. system to locate a doctor on board while other passengers relocated so the woman could stretch out across a row of seats.

Within minutes the baby was delivered but, with the cord around his neck, he wasn’t breathing and was turning blue. A nearby paramedic shouted for a drinking straw which she used to suction fluid from the baby’s lungs. A man gave his shoelace to tie off the umbilical cord. Other travelers took turns amusing the mother’s three-year old daughter while the remaining people stayed in their seats in order to keep the aisle clear.

The plane finally landed; the passengers cheered; and the baby was stable. The parents named the little boy, Matthew, which means “Gift of God.” He was given the middle name of Dulles after the airport where the plane made its emergency landing. On the birth certificate where it states “Place of Birth,” little Matthew’s reads “In Flight.” [4]

Matthew landed safely because of help from a lot of people who contributed whatever was necessary to help him live – from medical skills and child care to a shoe lace and drinking straw. Life is intended to be like that, and when human beings live out a sense of community, as we do in the pro-life movement, that is much more reflective of the history and heart of the people of America than of the heartless individualism inherent in abortion.

So, here we are at the 41st anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. No doubt some pro-lifers are frustrated at the seemingly slow pace of progress. Others are experiencing burnout after so many years.

Yet, the reality is that we have not really been at this effort all that long. We are actually a very young Movement and have made great progress given the many obstacles we face. Read NARAL’s “Who Decides? The Status of Women’s Reproductive Rights in the United States” and your heart will leap for joy. NARAL understands that the Pro-Life Movement is alive and well at the state and federal level.

That is no “little thing!”

It all comes back to people looking at the same thing but seeing something different. After 41 years and 56 million abortions, we could ask that famous question from the Benghazi tragedy: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

It makes no difference unless you believe there is a difference between duty and silence, between truth and falsehood, between honor and shame, between life and death. In the really big scheme of life, those are not “little things.”

Read More: 

http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2014/01/once-your-eyes-are-open-to-the-tragedy-of-abortion-you-cannot-unsee/

By Wesley J. Smith

It has been 41 years since Roe v. Wade “settled” the abortion controversy, leaving in its wake ever-increasing societal divisions and a crumbling of our culture’s commitment to the equality and sanctity of human life.

Law doesn’t just reflect our values. In these days of cultural relativism, it teaches right from wrong. If something is “legal,” many see it as “morally right.”

If I am correct, that explains why abortion became so ubiquitous post-Roe. Pregnant women—and often, their persuasive boyfriends/husbands who didn’t want to bear the responsibility of fatherhood—came to see abortion not only as “a right” but “the right thing to do” when a baby was not planned.

More than that, Roe helped create a social environment in which the most weak and vulnerable among us came to be viewed as less than human.

Roe certainly wasn’t the first Supreme Court ruling to engage in dehumanizing rhetoric. The first was the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford, in which Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that black human beings are of “an inferior order,” as a consequence of which, they have no rights” which whites were “bound to respect.” That decision not only helped create the climate for civil war, but validated blatantly racist views.

The second such case was the 1927 Buck v. Bell, which authorized the involuntary sterilization of Carrie Buck, the daughter of a prostitute, because she gave birth out of wedlock. Subsequently, tens of thousands of innocent Americans who ran afoul of the pernicious junk science of eugenics were sterilized under color of law. Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ assertion that “three generations of imbeciles are enough” deserves a special place in jurisprudential infamy.

In its turn, Roe relativized nascent human life by making the moral value of a fetus dependent on whether he or she is wanted. Perhaps even more destructively, it also legitimized the dangerous notion that taking human life—killing—is a morally acceptable answer to human suffering.

In the years since, that meme has expanded to threaten human life outside the womb. For example, it helped create the environment in which people with profound cognitive disabilities—such as Terri Schiavo—are not only viewed as less than human (“nonpersons”), but killable through intentional dehydration. Worse, there is now much advocacy in bioethical and medical journals to make instrumental use of such patients as sources of organs—as is sometimes already done with the bodies of aborted fetuses.

Meanwhile, assisted suicide advocates explicitly tie their death agenda to the abortion license, claiming that anyone who supports the right of “pregnancy termination” should also support the right of for the sick and disabled to self-terminate.

Following Roe’s legal playbook, assisted suicide advocates have repeatedly sought court rulings creating a constitutional right to what they euphemistically call “aid in dying.” Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously refused to impose an assisted suicide Roe v Wade in 1997—a decision that I believe might have been different had the pro-life movement not rebelled so effectively and energetically against legal abortion.

But the assisted suicide crowd didn’t quit. In the years since, they have filed repeated state lawsuits seeking a state constitutional right to become dead. They failed in Florida, Alaska, Connecticut, and elsewhere, but partially succeeded a few years ago in a muddled ruling by the Montana Supreme Court.

And just the other day, a New Mexico judge ruled that “aid in dying” is a fundamental constitutional right in New Mexico. Time will tell whether that ruling sticks on appeal.

The legal and philosophical grounds that justify abortion have also been invoked as reasons to permit infanticide—or “after birth abortion”—as one bioethics article put it. That remains illegal in the U.S.—although the mercy killing of infants is common in the Netherlands where euthanasia is legal.

That should not make us sanguine. It is cause for great worry that the world’s most prestigious academic chair in bioethics is held by Princeton’s Peter Singer, not in spite of—but because—he happens to be the world’s foremost proponent of the moral propriety of killing babies whose lives do not serve the interests of their families.

Roe has also subverted the Hippocratic Oath. In fact, the Oath isn’t taken anymore by most new doctors precisely because it precludes abortion and assisted suicide. Once doctors don’t feel bound by “do no harm” Hippocratic values, anything becomes possible in the medical context.

Eventually, I worry that doctors and nurses will be forced by law to choose between remaining in their professions and being complicit with abortion and assisted suicide—either by doing the deed or referring to a colleague they know is willing to end human life. Indeed, I expect the fight over “medical conscience,” as it is sometimes called, to become one of our most intense cultural and legal flashpoints in coming years.

There is a great old Talmudic saying: “Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world..” If that is true—and I think it is great wisdom—how many worlds have been saved by the pro-life movement since Roe v Wade? Beyond counting! I have met some of them, and so have you.

Read More:

http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2014/01/roe-v-wades-toxic-fruit/

By Melissa Ohden

Editor’s note. Melissa is the survivor of a “failed” saline abortion in 1977. She speaks all over the world including at the last three National Right to Life Conventions. She has written many times for NRL News Today, but none is more moving than this essay.

The Ohden family, by five-year-old Olivia, drawn just minutes after finding out about her new sibling.

Sixty-two days. Today, my dear son or daughter, you are 62 days old. I say son or daughter, because, you are 62 days old in the womb today, so we don’t know a whole lot yet about you. But what we do know is this. You are ours and you are loved.

Without yet even seeing you, I feel your presence each day, and I look forward to your presence being made more aware to the world through a soon-to-be burgeoning belly and through movements that make your sister and father squeal with joy.

If you could look into our house right now, you would already find your room being prepared by your older sister, who the days until your birth just can’t pass by quickly enough for. You would see her wrapping her arms around me multiple times a day, laying her head to rest on my belly, where I can already feel all of the twinges and pulls of your growth, and kissing the spot where you lie deep within. You would also see her curled up by my side, reading books to you each morning.

For a woman who thought she knew what love was, I have been greatly schooled so far in your life. Your sister, Olivia’s, love for you is one of the truest, deepest loves that I have ever experienced, and your father and my love for you, of course, runs just as deep.

If you could look into our world right now and understand what was happening around you, I’ll be honest—some things would make you stare in wide-eyed disbelief and others would likely make you cry. Euthanasia thrives in countries like Belgium; parents must fight to have their children provided medical care; and abortion up until the point of birth in many states across the U.S. The culture of death is all around us.

Yet, if you could look into our world right now and understand what was happening around you, there are also many things that would make you stare wide-eyed in beautiful wonderment and cry tears of joy. On January 22, 2014, we will unfortunately be marking the 41st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that has resulted in 56 million deaths through legalized abortion, which was meant to include my own and therefore prevent your own conception, let alone, your upcoming day of birth.

As much as the Roe v. Wade decision has wreaked havoc on our nation and deeply damaged my life and the lives of my biological family, people you will once get to hear about and likely even meet, I take great joy in knowing that we are winning the war in the battle against abortion. God-willing, in your lifetime you will someday witness an end to the Roe v. Wade decision.

If you could look into our world, in just nine days you would see well over a half a million people, fellow pro-lifers like us, marching in Washington, D. C. for the March for Life, advocating for an end to abortion and commemorating the lives that have been lost and those that have been forever changed. What I wouldn’t give, my dear child, (I am choking back tears as I type this), for you to never have to know the horrible truth about abortion and what it has done to our world and to your own family.

But this terrible truth is a part of our history, and will lead you to appreciate events like the March for Life and those that fought for a culture of life to be restored to our country and world.

My perspective is unique. I am one of the survivors who were intended to add to total of 56 million lives lost. Instead I am a mother, a wife, and a dedicated pro-lifer.

I carry that knowledge that I was not meant to survive in my heart and in my spirit every day. Although there is great pain, my joy is much greater. My purpose, your purpose, as the child of a survivor of the abortion holocaust, brings me immeasurable joy, which I hope that you someday experience, too.

Read More: 

http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2014/01/a-letter-from-an-abortion-survivor-to-her-unborn-baby/