Roe supporters offer no sensible balance
A bortion advocates want you to think that the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision represents a sensible balance of reproductive freedom. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In addition to legalizing abortion, Roe established the principle that abortion could never be denied at any stage in a pregnancy if a woman’s “health” is at risk. “Life of the mother” risks were recognized at that time by some states, which then allowed abortion in those extremely rare situations. However, the reference to “health of the mother” was a new legal concept with respect to abortion. The definition of “health” was not articulated in Roe, but buried in the companion case, Doe v. Bolton.
Doe v. Bolton involved a 22-year-old woman from Atlanta who allegedly wanted an abortion because of her difficult social circumstances and fragile emotional health. With her husband in jail and two of her three children in foster care, Sandra Cano originally sought legal help to obtain a divorce and regain custody of her children. Instead, an ACLU lawyer used Sandra’s case, without her permission, to file a lawsuit against Georgia’s existing abortion laws, even though Sandra never wanted an abortion.
The case eventually established a broad definition of health to include “physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age — relevant to the well-being of the patient, all these factors may relate to health.” This definition of “health” was so inclusive as to allow virtually any unplanned pregnancy to be considered a health risk.
Combined with the Roe standard, which held that a woman could never be denied an abortion if her “health” was at risk, Doe’s definition of health established abortion on demand. This remains the law of our land regardless of how a state might attempt to restrict abortion. Lacking a “health of the mother” exception was cited by the Supreme Court in 2000 as the reason it struck down bans on partial-birth abortion passed by 39 states. More recently federal courts have again struck down the partial-birth abortion ban that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law because it did not contain the liberal version of the “health of the mother” exception. Therefore, partial-birth abortion remains a legal procedure through the ninth month of pregnancy.
This can hardly be called a sensible balance in abortion law.
As for the constancy of the abortion rate, advocates often make the disingenuous statement that they think abortion should be rare. Yet they fight every effort to put reasonable restrictions on it. The constant annual rate of 1.2 million abortions does not bother them in the least. Conservatively speaking at least 40 million abortions have been performed since 1973.
Abortion advocates can always be relied on to bring out the coat hangers and evoke fear of back alley abortions at the thought of reversing Roe. But here’s what NARAL co-founder Dr. Bernard Nathanson says about how the myth of the back alley abortion developed. “We announced to the media that we had taken polls and that 60 percent of Americans were in favor of permissive abortion. This is the tactic of the self-fulfilling lie. Few people care to be in the minority. We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public.”
Dr. Nathanson admits that they lied about the number of women who died annually from illegal abortion. He says, “The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans, convincing many that we needed to crack the abortion law.” The actual number who died from illegal abortion in 1972, the year before legalization, was 39. Tragically, women are still dying, including yet another victim who bled to death from a botched legal abortion on Jan. 13 in Wichita, Kan.
Ultrasound convinced Dr. Nathanson that abortion was wrong. He is now pro-life, along with Norma McCorvey and Sandra Cano. Remarkably, these three people who were instrumental in making abortion legal are now working to restore sanity to our nation after 32 years of abortion on demand.
Finally, the drumbeat of access to “comprehensive sex education” and prolific government-funded family planning programs has attempted to hoodwink the public into thinking that these strategies will “prevent” unplanned pregnancy. The underlying philosophy that non-marital recreational sex can be indulged in a “responsible” manner is hopelessly naive. This oxymoronic concept is obviously flawed to anyone with a shred of common sense.
America is finally waking up. The majority now opposes all or most abortions. They’ve heard the truth and it has set them free. It’s now time to make our country a safe place for all the unborn and their mothers.