Roe’s Legacy: Death and Destruction

Roe v. Wade legalized abortion for virtually any reason during all nine months of pregnancy. In its ruling, the Court broke the nine months of pregnancy into three trimesters.

In the first trimester, the Court ruled that abortion may not be restricted in any way. In the second trimester, the Court said that abortion may be regulated only in ways that benefit the mother’s health. In the third trimester, the Court said that abortion could be prohibited except when the mother’s "health" might be endangered by the pregnancy.

The Court didn’t define "health" in Roe, it defined "health" in Roe’s lesser-known companion case Doe v. Bolton. In Doe, the Court defined "health" as: "all factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to the well-being of the patient."

Obviously, this definition of "health" is so broad that virtually any reason can fit within it. A 1983 United States Senate report acknowledged this permissiveness when it said that "[n]o 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."

In Roe, the Court claims that it "found" a right to abortion in the Constitution. But even legal experts who support legal abortion dispute that claim. John Hart Ely, a Yale Law School professor said this: Roe v. Wade is "a very bad decision… because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be."

Edward Lazarus, former clerk to Justice Blackmun (who authored Roe) said, "As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible… [It is] one of the most intellectually suspect constitutional decisions of the modern era."

And Harvard Law School professor, Lawrence Tribe, said this: "One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found."

Of course, the biggest casualty of Roe and Doe is not intellectual or legal integrity, but real human lives—and souls. According to the abortion industry’s own estimates, more than 50 million abortions have been committed in the United States since 1973. And every year more than one million unborn human beings are added to the death toll.

In Nebraska, more than 175,000 abortions have been reported since 1973. That is an average of more than 4,600 per year, or almost 90 per week.

Such cold statistics don’t reflect the reality that every abortion destroys a unique and unrepeatable human life; a sacred gift given by, and made in the image and likeness of, our Almighty and Ever-living God.

And every abortion wounds the child’s mother, father, family and society. These wounds include physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual wounds for those involved. For our society, one wound is a dulled collective conscience that has degraded all human life and opened the door for attacks against vulnerable humans at other stages of life.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal, no. 373, says that "In all the dioceses of the United States of America, January 22 (or Jan. 23, when Jan. 22 falls on a Sunday) shall be observed as a particular day of prayer for the full restoration of the legal guarantee of the right to life and of penance for violations to the dignity of the human person committed through acts of abortion."

On this 39^th anniversary of Roe and Doe please commit—or recommit—yourself to fighting the insidious evil of abortion. And please join me in offering prayer and penance on Monday, Jan. 23, for this intention. For surely abortion is one of those demons that our Lord said (Mt. 17:21) could only be expelled with prayer and fasting.