In Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court created (bestowed) a constitutional right to abortion, which basically struck down all state laws regarding abortion and empowered federal courts to enforce that “right.”
Although the Court, in Roe, legalized abortion, it allowed some regulation of the practice in the second trimester and its prohibition in the third trimester, unless it was “necessary” to protect the woman’s life or health.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Douglas said that health exceptions allows for abortion for those who would otherwise be required to “endure the discomforts of pregnancy, incur the pain and aftereffects of childbirth, abandon educational plans, sustain loss of income, forgo the satisfactions of careers…bear the lifelong stigma of unwed motherhood.”
In a rarely mentioned “companion” case, Doe v. Bolton, which the Court considered and decided at the same time, the Justices declared that legislation or policy related to the “health” exception must take into account “…all factors – physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age – relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health.”Hence, the Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand for any reason during the entire nine months of pregnancy.
“Foundational” Myths…
- That prior to 1973, thousands of women died each year from illegal abortions
- That abortion laws targeted and punished women rather than abortionists
- That abortion laws did not reduce the numbers of abortions
- That legalizing abortion would be good for women
The Reality…
- According to statistics from neutral governmental sources, only 39 women died from illegal abortions in 1972, the year before Roe/Doe. (And 27 died from legal abortions!)
- According to investigation by legal experts, the laws that existed in the century prior to Roe and Doe were enforced against abortionists. (Women, who were recognized as secondary victims, were seldom prosecuted and never convicted.)
- According to research done in America – and in countries that have once again prohibited abortion – women are far less likely to abort when the practice is illegal because they believe that what is illegal is also unsafe and immoral. Since 1973, women have admitted they would not have had an abortion if it had been illegal.
- According to studies by both proponents and opponents of abortion, legalizing abortion has had a devastating effect on women’s physical and emotional health. Sexually-transmitted diseases are epidemic; ectopic pregnancies have increased; future fertility has declined; and the risk of breast cancer has increased.
Some of Roe’s Progeny…
In 1992, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Court re-affirmed Roe and determined that American women would not have equal opportunity in society unless they had the legal right to abort their children.
In 2000, in Stenberg v. Carhart the Court declared that an abortionist may choose the type of abortion, including the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure, he or she “…believes will be best…” for the woman seeking an abortion.
This ruling was made in spite of the admissions by both the American Medical Society and abortionists that the partial-birth procedure is never necessary, is not good medicine, and actually is contraindicated (meaning it would do more harm than good.)
The complete wording of both Roe and Doe may be found at: www.tourolaw.edu/patch/Roe/.
The 30-Year-Old Lie
The legality of abortion today is based on the U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. And those two rulings, in turn, were based on lies.
The first case, Roe v. Wade, was based on the allegation that Norma Jane McCorvey (Roe) was raped. Since the only allowance made for abortion in Texas at that time was for the ‘life of the mother’, McCorvey’s attorneys argued that the law should be struck. Yet Norma McCorvey, who now works to overturn Roe, admits pregnancy did NOT result from rape.
The second case, Doe v Bolton, was based on the allegation that Sandra Cano (Doe) – a penniless, homeless mother of three who was carrying another child – wanted an abortion.
In fact, Cano went to a legal aid office because her children had been taken from her and she wanted them back. When she later learned her attorney had filed the case under false pretenses and then ‘won’ her the right to have an abortion, she was stunned. “It was like a ton of bricks had fallen on my shoulders. I never wanted an abortion. Regardless of the worst state of misery or depression, it would never cross my mind to take the life of a child.”
Two Justices, William Rehnquist and Byron White, dissented in the 1973 abortion cases. The following comes from the dissenting opinion of Supreme Court Justice Byron T. White.
“At the heart of the controversy in these cases are those recurring pregnancies that pose no danger whatsoever to the life or health of the mother but are, nevertheless, unwanted for any one or more of a variety of reasons — convenience, family planning, economics, dislike of children, the embarrassment of illegitimacy, etc….
“With all due respect, I dissent. I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes … As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.
“The Court apparently values the convenience of the pregnant mother more than the continued existence and development of the life or potential life that she carries. Whether or not I might agree with that marshalling of values, I can in no event join the Court’s judgment because I find no constitutional warrant for imposing such an order of priorities on the people and legislatures of the States. In a sensitive area such as this, involving as it does issues over which reasonable men may easily and heatedly differ, I cannot accept the Court’s exercise of its clear power of choice by interposing a constitutional barrier to state efforts to protect human life and by investing mothers and doctors with the constitutionally protected right to exterminate it….”
