Fetal Life and Abortion:
Human Personhood at Conception
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Displayed Responses 2005
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2005
December 27th: Roe v. Wade - point of no return?
December 21st: Ethics and the People
December 12th: Fathers' rights are natural rights, human rights
December 5th: A world of people's rights being disenfranchised by abortion
November 28th: Has the Supreme Court and the culture learned from Roe v. Wade?
November 21st: What will be the Senate's standard for judging Samuel Alito?
November 14th: Was Roe v. Wade fabricated with shakey language ?
November 7th: Exploring Casey's "undue burden"
October 31st: Roe v. Wade - still, no father's rights
October 24th: Roe's "right to privacy" vs. Griswold's "marital privacy"
October 10th: Roe v. Wade and its consequences to you
September 30th: Secondary effects of Roe v. Wade
September 23rd: Q&A: morality, ethics or religion, Roe v. Wade
September 15th: Stare decisis and Roe v. Wade
September 9th: Justice Rehnquist's dissent in Roe v. Wade
September 2nd: How many "potential humans" can dance on the head of a pin? NONE!
August 26th: The ethics of Right to Life
August 19th: No substantial changes in the stem-cell argument
August 12th: Impressing the Supreme Court with the ethical significance of Roe
August 1st: New Supreme Court candidate, ethics, and Roe
July 19th: Mary Ann Glendon's The Women of Roe v. Wade
July 8th: Roe inverted the presumption of humanity in the unborn
July 2nd: The moral fiber of our law vs. Roe v. Wade
June 24th: Post Roe? The Culture of Life!
June 17th: Did Roe fail the concept of "person" in the 14th Amendment?
June 7th: Questioning the competence of the Roe Court
May 31st: Are we "out there" with bio-technology?
May 23rd: Raging human embryonic stem-cell debate
May 6th: Comparing the Dred Scott decision with Roe v. Wade
April 28th: The meaning of abortion?
April 21st: Comment on "cloned" embryonic, human stem-cells
April 11th: Embryonic stem-cells NO; Adult stem-cells YES
April 4th: Hastening the return to the culture of life
March 21st: The personhood of Terri Schiavo
March 20th: The obligation to supply life resources
March 7th: Legalized euthanasia follows in the footsteps of Roe
March 1st: The Supreme Court denies McCorvey v. Hill appeal - what next?
February 21st: McCorvey v. Hill offers the Court a means of overriding Roe
February 10th: The unborn child is not a parasite
February 3rd: Legislation on a painful "choice"
January 28th: Women have changed their minds about Roe v. Wade
January 17th: The basics for a reversal of Roe v. Wade
January 7th: Post Roe? The Culture of Life
Reprinted from April 4, 2005:
Editor’s Note: In a short interval of time the U.S. has transformed itself from being a nurturing nation, the pioneering years, into a killing nation, the years of Roe. V. Wade.
With government approval we deliberately kill our young, by legalized abortion. No other species in the Animal Kingdom kill their own offspring. We have reduced ourselves to a level below the brute. Yet, with our military, we spread ourselves around the world, “saving” lives for other nations. How long can this schizophrenia continue before we will have reached the “point of no return?”
Reply: Living in the midst of contradictions that are “tolerated” is a form of moral blindness, a refusal to face the truth. Helping one’s neighbors is good. Killing one’s own people is bad. To accept the good, without rejecting the bad, is a breach of integrity, whether on the part of an individual or by a nation.
How long can we live with contradictions without losing touch with reality? Without doubt there is a “point of no return,” at which the distinction between good and evil has been either denied or merely forgotten and at which we disregard our accountability. In the case of blindly accepting abortion as nothing other than a bothersome incident, best forgotten, there are still some “consequences” that tend to preserve the reality. Post-abortion syndrome is one of them. It is deeply embedded in the nature of a woman to remember the one-time resident of her womb, especially one whom she did not welcome there. It is the not-welcoming that stands out most clearly in her memory, because it is something “felt” and not just remembered.
I think it is fair to say that for some individuals and some organizations, the “point of no return” has already been reached and, in some cases, far exceeded. The taste of blood is no longer repulsive to them. They would vehemently repel any attempt to restore personal dignity to human life, except their own, of course. Having been encouraged to choose according to their fancy, the “Do your own thing!” crowd is beyond helping. By their own slogan, they have severed the channels to outside help.
But they are not the whole of our society. There are some of our citizens who are dedicated to justice and good order in our country, who represent our better interests as a people. Your question, then, is whether and, if so, when might this segment of our people stand up and reestablish our claim to our human dignity and a culture of life for our nation? Fortunately they are already at work, like leaven in the dough, cultivating moral health in our youngsters, assisting those who are experiencing distressful pregnancies, and guiding back to health those who had been devastated by having made the wrong choice with respect to their pregnancies. These are the pro-lifers of our nation who, with their counterparts around the world, are encouraging responsible parenthood, with happy children and gracious family living.
Is the 1973 Supreme Court’s decision, Roe v. Wade, responsible for the nation’s degradation? Not totally! If the nation’s moral climate had not already degenerated, that decision could not have been rendered. However, the decision codified and gave the stamp of approval to the degradation already in existence, and to that which has multiplied after, and because of it. The question for each of us now is to ask: “What can I do to hasten our return from the culture of death to the culture of life?" E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor's Note: Ethics, the science of morality, is a product of human reasoning. Reasoning, when not impeded by error or blinded by emotion, terminates in truth. To posses truth is to know things as they are; the correctness of the knowledge is measured by correspondence to the thing known. The following discussion demonstrates the need for clear thinking on the subject of morality when applied to social and political matters.
Question: The challenge against the inclusion of God in our Pledge of Allegiance raises questions about religion and politics in the U.S. How do you handle such questions in your work against legal abortion, especially when you speak about morality?
Reply: The United States is a nation in which Church and State are two separate domains, each an area of activity distinct from the other. But this does not mean that religion and politics may not intermingle in the lives of its citizens and of the nation. It means, simply, that one specific religious denomination, or church, may not be incorporated into the state as the established state religion.
It should be emphasized that the citizens of the United States and their government are not irreligious. “In God we trust.” is found on their coins; prayer is offered at the daily opening of their federal legislature; a day of thanksgiving to God is a national holiday. In practice, then, the First Amendment of the Constitution, the occasion of the unnecessary confusion mentioned in the question above, does not prohibit religious expression in the political life of the nation.
Atheists, who deny the existence of God, question whether the state should be permitted to give recognition of God’s existence. A careful reading of the First Amendment does not encourage their questioning.. The Constitution does not concern itself with whether religion or irreligion is to be favored by the government of the nation. It merely states that no one of the religious denominations may be preferred in public life, to the exclusion of the others. In the Declaration of Independence the “inalienable rights” are proclaimed as having been “endowed by our Creator.” Other documented policies of the nation have consistently reflected a belief in God, which was characteristic of the Founding Fathers and of the nation’s majority since their time.
Examine this statement: “The moral principles of any one religious group may not be forced by government upon the people of the nation.” True! However, it would be wise to look at some of the unwarranted suppositions that stem from this statement: that the state must not concern itself with morality, and that certain moral principles must be rejected simply because they are taught and practiced by some or all religious denominations.
A better understanding of the relationships between politics and religion and between politics and morality can be gained by looking at the relationship between religion and morality.
Religion expresses a mutual relationship between an individual human, or a group of humans, and God. God is accepted by various persons as the ultimate cause of their existence and their continued well being, the designer and giver of their human freedom and, therefore, the one to whom accountability must be rendered. Morality expresses this accountability. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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The obligation of parents to protect and nurture their child is a matter of commonsense. It is in the nature of things. Civil law recognizes and enforces this obligation, as in the case of demanding child support from divorced parents. Because this obligation flows from the nature of things, and not merely imposed by civil law, a parent has a natural right, superior to civil law, to save the life of his or her unborn baby. Roe v. Wade is unjustly depriving fathers of their human right to protect and nurture their unborn offspring.
Reprinted from August 19, 2002:
Editor's note: In our Response of Aug. 10th, we say that the Supreme Court went beyond its jurisdiction when they legally denied fathers the exercise of their natural right to defend their unborn babies. We would like to expand on that by asking ourselves a question: Do you think that the Supreme Court would accept our claim that nature has its own laws and that they are outside of even the Supreme Court's reach to modify or deny?
Reply: I can only guess whether the "Roe" Court would have given thought to the claims of nature, as being superior to their own. I fear that if the father's rights had come up for consideration, it would have been quickly settled by stating that the father of an unborn baby is, after all, "not a father in the full sense." And that would be the end of that, except nobody would ever know what they meant by that expression. It would be as fully mysterious as their claim that the unborn baby is "not a person in the full sense" and, consequently, may be killed by his or her mother.
Perhaps the present Court, or some future Court, would consider the question of nature's claim vs. man's claim, though it is not the kind of problem usually entertained by modern courts of law. "Laws of nature" evidently are not codified and registered in law libraries. However, they ought to be on the front shelves of every human being's intelligence, in a degree compatible with his or her developmental age.
In the following discussion I wish to limit my remarks to the case of married persons, husband and wife and their unborn baby. Other cases for which the Court has provided legalized abortion are to be excluded from this present writing.
The matter under question could be put quite simply: Does any court of human beings have jurisdiction over laws which are not of human making? In this instance, by the nature of marriage and family life, husband and wife have equal responsibility to protect the life of their unborn baby, since they are equally responsible for their baby's existence. Corresponding to the equality of their obligation, each parent has equal right to whatever is reasonably required for fulfilling his or her obligation pertaining to the welfare of their unborn baby.
In light of this long-standing understanding of nature, the "Roe" Court should be gravely faulted for saying to the wife: "You may kill your unborn baby." and to the husband: "You may not prevent your wife from killing your baby." For the Court to have ignored the partnership participation in marriage, they would have to be faulted either for an incomplete study of the question or for an inadequate sense of human values.
Is it possible that the Court may have looked upon the mother's role in childbearing as being greatly more burdensome than the role of the father, and then translated the comparison into the mother's right to rid herself of the "burden" as superior to the father's right to save their baby's life?
No one would deny that the "biological burden" of parenthood is more physically demanding, on a
24-hour basis, for the mother than for the father. Over-all equality of "burden," however, can be demonstrated by the father's daily job in the workplace, supporting his pregnant wife and their baby, along with other family responsibilities. Different jobs, but equal contributions to the welfare of the unborn baby and the family! Why, then, the unequal favoritism, in this case, the wife's total control over the life and death of their unborn baby?As for the hypothetical position questioning the full fatherhood of the unborn baby's father, let me suggest a simple fact of biology: It is the husband's contributing of a reproductive cell (sperm) actually fusing with the wife's reproductive cell (ovum) producing the zygote (single-celled stage of their offspring) that establishes the husband's fatherhood and the wife's motherhood. And this is fatherhood in the "full sense" of biology's careful presentation of reproduction as the workings of nature.
The wider working of nature in human beings, its psychological and moral aspects with respect to marriage and family, demands the equal dignity and rights of husband and wife. And it demands a nurturing environment for their offspring, not only during pregnancy, but during the entire process of maturing into adulthood.
It is interesting to note that, as I write this, a news service, called "Infonet," reports that a husband in China, starting on Sept. 1st, of this year, will have a legal right equal to that of his wife, to decide the birth or non-birth of their unborn baby. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the alleged basis of this new law is what we have described above, the nature of marriage and family. Granting legal equality to husband and wife (in conformity with the dictates of nature) may be a step in the right direction. However, we must totally disagree with the "legal freedom" of husband and wife, both consenting, to kill their unborn baby. That is directly opposed to the purposive function of nature. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Reprinted from January 27, 2002:
Comment: Many countries around the world are experiencing internal conflict on the subject of abortion. Some are striving to clothe abortion with legitimacy by legalizing it, as in the U.S. Others are denouncing abortion as morally and socially unacceptable and are fighting attempts at legalization. Some are still looking for ground upon which to embrace both of these contradictory positions.
Concerning the United States, your site speaks frequently of the Supreme Court's decision of 1973 as a source of social unrest. I appreciate your coverage of that decision because it gives insight into abortion even as it exists in some of the other countries. What disturbs me about our country is the imposition of legalized abortion upon the people by a court of law, without oversight provision on the part of the people. One specific detail, completely beyond my understanding, is the Court's denial of a father's right to defend his child's life against the mother's choice of abortion.
Reply: You have struck upon some roots of resentment felt by a people who have been disenfranchised from their role in government, and from their individual rights. The individual states in the U.S. had spoken their minds against the practice of abortion, yet our Supreme Court over-rode their sincere and well-crafted legal enactments.
As for the disenfranchised fathers, your reaction is understandable. It simply doesn't make sense "to rob Peter in order to pay Paul." By "giving rights" to the mother, rights had to be "taken away" from the father of the child. This is but one of the many contradictions in the "logic" of Roe v. Wade. Imagine! A father wanting to fulfill his obligation to defend the life of his child, and being denied by our Supreme Court the exercise of his right to do so!
Similar resentments are shared by all thinking persons of good will in every nation where abortion has been legalized. The basis of that resentment is the insensitivity of their country's disregard for the humanity of the unborn and, therefore, of all humanity.
With regard to this insensitivity, I would offer a suggestion: The success of upholding human dignity in any one nation is contingent upon what the rest of the world holds, in practice, on the nature of human beings. Perhaps this has not always been so, but it appears as self-evident in our age of extensive and instantaneous communication. In exercising our prerogative of making choices, we humans tend to justify our own less noble conduct by the "approved" example of others. This, in the course of time, becomes a vicious circle or, more accurately, a downward spiral of social degeneration.
May I suggest that the Internet could become a forum for international discussion of human values. Such discussion, embraced by persons of all persuasions, could promote a sense of solidarity of people with one another in the pursuit of truth, justice and, perhaps, even peace. If this were to be accomplished in the midst of our present turmoil, the unborn of our confused society will not have died in vain. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Reprinted from December 5, 2002:
Question: In the case of Roe v. Wade, do you think that the courts were constrained to make significant public policy or not? Were the courts constrained doctrinally, institutionally, or culturally?
Reply: It is my opinion that the "Roe" court aimed at establishing a change in public policy, in response to what they perceived to be a change in the nation's culture.
In reading what follows, you should keep in mind that the Supreme Court prides itself on being the living Constitution, not merely a Constitution frozen in time.
"We, the people," during the past century had given protection to the unborn by having criminalized abortion. Now, "We, the people," in the eyes of the Court, were clamoring to remove that protection. The Court, seeing the Constitution as the will of the people, seems to have disregarded the original Constitution, in favor of the articulated will of the current generation. In their haste to up-date the Constitution, the Court failed to see that the clamor arose, not from the majority of the people, but from a mere handful of opportunistic revolutionaries.
In the years immediately prior to Roe v. Wade, we had become a permissive society. "Do your own thing!" had been the rebellious norm of individual behavior, progressing into institutional behavior and, possibly, influencing the behavior of the Court.
I cite here, from among many, peculiarities of the Court, a few examples: In ample time before the 1973 decision was handed down by the Court, the plaintiff, Jane Roe was no longer seeking an abortion. She had carried her child to term and entrusted her to others, by adoption. Under normal circumstances, the Court would have terminated the case, as moot, since there was no longer a cause for complaint. But the "Roe" court did not desist in pursuing their action. Did the Court have a mission to fulfill? They continued the case, it would seem, to favor all women in the country who might, forever, be seeking abortions. They accomplished this by prohibiting the states from interfering with the mother's choice to abort her baby.
Equally revealing is the Court's disregard of a fundamental principle of ethics: After admitting their ignorance about the beginning of a human being's life, they proceeded to sanction the killing of what they knew could be human beings. They covered this breach of ethics by speaking of "potential human beings," an expression which has no correspondence to anything in the real world of nature.
By an inexcusable error in reasoning, the "marital privacy" of a previous case, called "Griswold," was illogically tailored by the Court into a "right to privacy." It is this fabrication in "Roe" which protects the maternal parent's choice of killing her unborn baby. The two cases have nothing substantial in common. Nor is there any Constitutional basis for the newly contrived "right to privacy." The Court themselves admit that. The closest they could approach the Constitution to locate such a "right" was in the "fringes of the shadows" of that otherwise revered document.
And something must be said about the Court's total disregard of the paternal parent's right to fulfill his natural obligation to defend his baby's life, in the face of the mother's "right" to dispose of their baby. Does this not indicate the single-mindedness of the Court? The unborn "potential human," as they termed the baby, and the father were given no serious consideration by the Court.
Did the Court's preoccupation with the mother leave women, and the rest of the nation, better off because of Roe v. Wade? Has it improved our culture? Does it even reflect our culture? I suggest giving the full membership of "We, the people" an opportunity to answer those and similar questions, without interference from the Court.
You may read Roe v. Wade, verbatim, here. If you wish to consider our commentary, read Section 9, from our text material. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor’s note: In applying for a legal position with the Reagan Administration, Judge Samual Alito, currently with the Third District Appeals Court, stated that he finds no basis in the U.S. Constitution to justify the 1973 abortion decision, Roe v. Wade. As a nominee for the Supreme Court, at the resignation of Mrs. O’Connor, his nomination is being questioned by some members of the Senate.
Comment: It is curious that Judge Alito is being criticized (condemned?) by certain Senators because he said that Roe v. Wade has no founding in the U.S. Constitution. It is curious because the majority in Roe had said the same thing: that the linchpin of Roe, namely “privacy” was not found in the Constitution, but in the fringes of its secondary shadow. Using their analogy from Optics, if it is in the shadow it is obviously not in the thing casting the shadow.
It is interesting also that Judge Alito, in the lower court hearing of Casey, maintained that the husband should be notified before his wife aborted their child. In his judgment, notification would not constitute “an undue burden” on the woman. The very commonsense notion that the father of an unborn child has some rights in the abortion decision had escaped the crafters of Roe. For some Senators, the helpful truth spoken by Judge Alito, instead of being seen as beneficial for the sake of justice, must be used against him.
Without intending to be flippant, I ask whether Judge Alito is being targeted because he is speaking the truth, or because the truth he speaks isn’t palatable to some of his examiners.
Another interesting specter peeping from the darkness of the illogical, is the implied assumption that a judge must be totally amoral in his personal convictions. If a judge has moral conviction about the injustice of legalized abortion, he must not be allowed to hear cases in which legalized abortion is involved. Is that because he might be tempted to question the validity of legalized abortion? If truth and justice are the stuff of good judgment, it would seem that judges should be required to have at least a minimum of moral sense, and what they do have should not be used against them. It is not likely that the former Chief Justice Rhenquist was thought to be less worthy a justice because of his personal stance as a dissenter in Roe v. Wade.
I presume that the above situation is prompted by the fear that a judge might vote from his moral judgment, rather than from the wording of the law. Or is the fear directed more toward the possibility that the judge might use his moral insight to question the law, before submitting his judgment on the application of the law?
The “damaging” statements of Judge Alito's were not based on his moral sense only, but especially on his legal knowledge. Must he deny what he knows to be the truth, in order to be approved as an acceptable symbol of justice?
If an onlooker may be permitted to make an observation, I would say that the Senators could better serve the cause of justice by studying Roe v. Wade than by condemning those who may hold a moral position against that decision. Their study of Roe might help them understand why there are persons who reasonably oppose the Roe decision. Then they could give us a wiser Court and a greater likelihood of justice, stare decisis not withstanding. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Reprinted from September 2, 2003:
Editor’s Note: In their eagerness to legalize abortion, the “Roe” court disregarded some critical evidence against their position. The Court said that the states had criminalized abortion in order to protect the mother, not her unborn child. Yet, the documents of the American Medical Association of 1857, which prompted the enactment of those laws, states most clearly that AMA’s concern was to eliminate the “wanton killing” of the unborn. These documents were available to the Court.
Comment: The “Roe” court attempted to uphold their decision by minimizing historical opposition to abortion. The fact that the people of the several states had voiced their concern for the welfare of the unborn child had to be misconstrued with the fiction of the mother’s welfare. The purpose of this strategy is seen in the Court’s conclusion that abortion, in our day, needs no longer to be criminalized because modern medicine has eliminated its hurt to the mother.
This is a harsh criticism of the court that fabricated Roe v. Wade. The claims of justice, however, are often harsh, and a court of law, especially, must honor them. The lives of countless, defenseless “others” are at stake here, in a country that proclaims “justice and liberty for all!”
Again, as often before, I ask our viewers to consider the Court’s presumption of their competency, or the competency of any other body of human beings, including the total population of the world, to decide who is a human person and what is not a human being, for the purpose of killing some and preserving the others.
The “Roe” court speaks of the unborn as being “not a person, in the full sense.” Someone might interpret this as speaking of “legal personhood,” something recognized only at birth, sometimes called citizenship. Granted, the unborn is not that. But is there no problem if he or she is killed before enjoying the opportunity of being born, of being able to attain that status? Is that justice! Could it be extended to the justification of killing all persons in the U.S. who are not citizens, but merely visitors?
It is likely that the Court’s “not in the full sense” corresponds to their “potential human,” another of the Court’s nonsensical classifications of the unborn. This would be to deny the humanity of the unborn, by implication. Again, I ask our viewers: Who are they, this little group of human beings, to deny to the unborn what they, themselves, had enjoyed before they, themselves, were born!
Another declaration of the “Roe“ court tells us that the unborn have no “meaningful existence.” They did not explain what they meant by that expression, but would they admit that, in their own life-experiences, their lives before birth had no purpose? If so, they might begin to wonder where the sudden, newly found meaning of their existence came from, or to wonder whether it has come at all.
Whatever the Court intended by their ambiguous language, their professed uncertainty of who or what is being killed by abortion, renders their decision unjust. The pertinent, time-honored ethical principle states that, in case of doubt, in the face of possible injury to another person, action is not permitted. The expression “possible injury to another person” covers the possibility (which the Court admitted) that the unborn might be a human person. It follows, quite simply, that the “Roe” court should not have sanctioned the mother’s killing of her unborn child. E.R reply@unbornperson.org
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Reprinted from September 10, 2004:
Question: How can it be fair for the federal courts to trash the partial-birth abortion ban? The ban was established by the U.S. Legislature and is endorsed by the majority of the people.
Reply: The federal courts, starting with "Nebraska” and ending with the three recent District Court decisions, have given two reasons for their action: The ban imposes “an undue burden” upon women seeking abortion, and it makes no exception for the health of the mother. The “undue burden” clause is taken from “Casey,”
During the enactment of the federal ban, a large volume of medical evidence showed that the partial-birth abortion procedure is never necessary for the bodily health of a pregnant woman, indicating that, when chosen, it is for reasons other than bodily health. Furthermore, in abortion terminology, “health’ was given to mean not only a condition of the body, but emotional and economic conditions as well. It is for this reason that the federal ban does not use “health” in its vocabulary. The legislature was anticipating a breach of the ban through the faulty meanings that had been attached to the time-honored definition of health.
With this in mind, I can understand your concern for lack of fairness on the part of the federal judiciary, assuming that Roe v. Wade must be protected at any cost. However, questions may be raised whether the Court, in 1973, even thought about the manner of aborting the baby. Would any atrocious means of killing, such as partial-birth abortion, be outside the freedom to kill the baby? Would any kind of butchery, such as partial-birth abortion, be acceptable under that decision of the Court? Another basic question is whether the Supreme Court is competent to decide who is a human being and what things are not human beings. It was not fair of the Court to sanction the killing of the unborn, while professing ignorance of what it is that is being killed in legalized abortion. The Court must, eventually, face up to these and similar questions.
One problem with “undue burden” is that it was never clearly defined by the Court. It can mean anything, differently for different people. The Court failed to propose a minimum “burden” proportionate to the hurt of the barbaric procedure, to prevent frivolous excuses for undertaking it. A greater unfairness lies in their assumption that any “burden” can be proportionate to the value of a human being’s life.
Your use of the concept “fairness” is well chosen. Abortion is never “fair.” The baby has no voice, yet pays with his or her life. The distressed mother has been given a voice, but unjustly, for which she pays throughout her post-abortion syndrome. The father has been unnaturally deprived of his voice and conscientious fathers pay for that in the anguish of their legal inability to save the lives of their own children. The society has a voice, but if not effectively spoken, will pay in the total collapse of their nation. The Court has a voice, but, if the above-mentioned circumstances are unfair, what must be said of that which is responsible for the existence of those circumstances?
The U.S. Justice System will challenge the recent court decisions that have declared the federal partial-birth abortion ban unconstitutional. They will, if given an opportunity, ask the questions necessary for fairness. They will want to know the constitutional basis of the Court’s rejection of the partial-birth abortion ban. How the Supreme Court will respond will be life-giving, on the one hand, and catastrophic, on the other. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor's Note: Disregarding the father's natural right to defend the life of of his unborn child is a crass injustice on the part of the Roe court. The existence of that natural right is not mentioned in the decision as having been considered by the Court. And it is curious that the Supreme Court, even to this day, has done nothing to repair that error.
Reprinted from June 2, 2001:
Comment: I agree with your saying that, through Roe v. Wade, a human being is deprived of his or her most fundamental right, the right to his or her life. I would like to offer my opinion on another injustice perpetrated by that decision, the denial of the father's right to defend the life of his offspring.
Even though the court was not willing to accept the humanity of what was to be killed by abortion, it should have weighed the mother's choice against the wish of a father to preserve whatever it is that he had fathered, especially when he is convinced that it is a son or daughter.
Reply: If that Court were listening, you would see that you have touched a tender nerve, since there is no pretext under which they could hide their neglect of the father's right to fulfill his obligation of caring for his offspring. I would think it fair to say that no serious attempts were made in that decision to balance the rights of all involved in an abortion, whether at the level of the individual or the state. Worse, perhaps, is the neglect of succeeding Courts to remedy that deficiency. You may refer to Section 9 for further analysis of Roe v. Wade. E.R.
Reprinted from December 10, 2002:
Question: I agree with everything you guys are saying but the fact is women can do it now
but what do u guys think of the fathers right to chose?Reply: Your question is an interesting one. However I can only speculate on the outcome, if fathers would demand the choice of aborting their unborn babies. At the outset, I would suggest that men would stand a lesser chance of persuading the Supreme Court to consider their plea than was accorded the women by the Roe v. Wade court. Men do not have a "Men's Lib." to bend the culture away from commonsense and into the morass of emotional persuasion. Nor would the mistaken gallantry of the Court toward the "disadvantaged" gender likely find equal appeal in the petition of their fellow males.
Although the father is not mentioned in "Roe," the father may not defend his baby's life. He does not stand out from among those who may not interfere with the mother's decision. With this in mind, it is not likely that the daring gallantry of approval for the mother's disposal of the baby would ever be extended to the male parent. It would not make sense, in the context of the Court's unbalanced vision of what is involved in abortion. They see abortion as something involving only the woman.
If the above observation seems unfair and cynical, let me explain its purpose. I am not unaware of the reality that childbearing is more of a "burden" to the mother than to the father, at least in the sense of bodily involvement. I see more in "Roe" than this physical aspect of pregnancy. I see an attempt on the part of the Court to manipulate difference-of-gender from what is natural, to give it a court-determined status: in this instance, by encouraging antagonism between a mother and her baby and encouraging the abandonment of responsibility by the baby's father.
The price of this maneuver is the deaths of 40 million of our unborn babies and the social disorder rising from the disarranged lives of their parents and other members of their families. Concerned citizens of our nation also suffer from the declining social standard set by their government. The natural concepts of marriage and family, the basis of human society, have been replaced by the ideology of the Court.
In ancient Rome, where men were the lawmakers, the father was privileged by the customs of "Paterfamilias" to kill his offspring; in our day it is the mother. As the ill-fated cigarette commercial used to say it: "Yes, baby, you've come a long way!"
Let us hope that, sometime soon, the commonsense of both women and men will over-ride the extravagances of the Court. Then our nation can begin to live again! E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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We offer this study in logic to raise interest in the U.S. Senate's current investigation of Harriet Meirs, nominated to become a member of the Supreme Court. Since Roe v. Wade seems to be a pivot point in that investigation, we invite our readers to examine a problematic foundation of that decision.
Reprinted from September 9, 2003:
Editor’s Note: The Supreme Court reached far and wide to establish the concept of “privacy” that underlies their 1973, Roe v. Wade, decision. Their extensive hunting and its meager harvest inclines one to suspect that the foundation of their concept is less than sound. It is not reassuring that so many “bits and pieces” had to be brought into the process, in place of a clear-cut, Constitutional basis for their product.
Comment: Most significant among the precedents used in the Roe decision is Griswold, the 1968 decision which struck down the ban against the sale of contraceptives in Connecticut. It is this decision that created “the right to marital privacy.” Surprisingly, the Roe court found that “marital privacy” includes not only the freedom of married persons to purchase contraceptives but, also, on the mother’s part, the freedom to kill her unborn by abortion. In Roe's expanded format, the privacy no longer needed to be designated as “marital.” “Right to privacy” would be sufficient. Now, even the unmarried mother was free to dispose of her baby, just as the unmarried, as well as the married, were free now to buy contraceptives in Connecticut.
Let us examine, briefly, the lack of logic displayed in this transition from contraceptives to abortion. And let us note the transition from “marital” and its significance in Griswold to its total non-significance in Roe. It is helpful here to use a distinction employed by logicians for the purpose of comparing two things, the difference between the univocal (identical or, of the same kind) and the analogous (similar, under some aspect.) In the old saying “Two heads are better than one.” we all know that the two heads are of the same kind, namely, the human’s seat of knowledge and self-government, as well as of bodily control. Neither one, nor the other, of the two heads could be a “head” of cabbage, or the “head” of a tack, or the “head” of a river.
In Griswold and in Roe there is a remote, common relationship of subject matter. They both concern themselves with the human reproductive faculty. However their difference is greater than this similarity. In one, conception is prevented from taking place; in the other, the product of conception, the child, is deliberately killed. Certainly the two cases are not the same. Ordinary logic would rightly suspect that the term “privacy” in these cases is used analogously and not univocally. Yet, the Roe court gives the same meaning to “privacy” as had been given, and approved, in Griswold.
In Griswold there is a plurality of persons, mutually consenting, and an institution, called marriage, in which the state has a legal interest. In Roe there is no legally significant institution (marriage and paternal rights are disregarded) and no admissibility of consent on the part of the child. The plurality of persons here, and there, is not one of equal standing. The “privacy” in Griswold is an institutional privacy; in Roe it has become an individual privacy, limited to the mother. The privacy, in each case, is quite different from the other. In Roe even the marital condition, when applicable, is quite different. In Roe the child’s father, even though he is the husband of the child’s mother, has no legal standing to speak for the life of their child.
In Griswold there is the accepted privacy of the family bedroom. In Roe there is the public glare of the abortion chamber, encompassing the witness of the abortion practitioner, and the public recording of the transaction. Obviously the privacy is not the same in both instances.
Finally, in Griswold, the same two persons initiating an event will walk away from it. In Roe, one of the participants will not.
From the above consideration, the “marital privacy” of Griswold should never have become the “right of privacy” in Roe.
I must add that there are finer shades of meaning in the concepts of privacy as used by the Roe court. I suggest that the Court identifies “privacy” with autonomy, as though to suggest that disposing of the child is something that belongs for the mother to do, for which she is accountable to no one. Yet, the Court invokes no authority for their assumption that such autonomy exists. We would welcome comments from our viewers on this matter. It is my contention that those finer meanings do not outweigh the commonsense evaluation that the “privacy” of Griswold and the “privacy” of Roe are in no manner univocal, but merely analogous. It is, therefore, illogical for the Court to have interchanged the two “privacies” with one another. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Because we are all under the consequences of Roe v Wade it is to our advantage to be aware of its hurtful influence in our lives, even as to such things as economics. By the deliberate loss of one-third of our population, we have forfeited one-third of our earning power and one-third of our tax base.
Reprinted from October 8, 2004:
Editorial Note: Things move along rapidly in our modern culture, so that even the strikingly shocking events quickly fade into a stupor of forgetfulness. To recall what happened on January 22, 1973, a review of its consequences would be helpful.
Comment: Roe v. Wade is the subject of the above observation. It is a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court prohibiting interference in a pregnant woman’s choice of ridding herself of her unborn child. Many of the consequences of that decision are in evidence today and will be so for many years to come. Permit me to list a few.
Most serious is disrespect for the human individual, now engendered into the fabric of our culture in the form of legalized abortion, embryonic experimentation and other forms of child abuse.
Fostering the delusion that human beings have a “choice” to dispose of their unborn offspring, has weakened the moral and social foundation of our nation. The delusion flies in the face of the natural instinct for parental nurture, not absent even in the behavior of the lesser animals. The Court is not competent to make a decision favoring “choice.”
There has developed a disturbing sense of rebellion against the government that legally sanctions these abuses.
Usurpation by the Supreme Court of subjects “too fundamental” (Justice Scalia) for their competence, such as the definition of who is, and what is not, a human being, has given rise to anxiety over possible, future decisions attacking other inalienable rights of the people.
Deprivation of personnel, by the loss of approximately one-third of the possible population by abortion, has resulted in unfavorable economic consequences. Among these is the loss of a market that would have been needed to provide for the needs of the discarded one-third, along with the taxable incomes of their earning power. Add to this, the problems of an ageing population.
Perhaps even a greater loss is the loss of genius and other cultural resources in the discarding of the one-third, leaders in government, industry, literature, religion, art and science.
Post-abortion syndrome, the distress of women “living with” their abortion, has become a recognized social problem. Fortunately, relief is available, in Project Rachel.
Legalized abortion has provided an effective escape from the male responsibility for consequences of abortion.
Denial of the natural right of a father to save the life of his own offspring is a sad contradiction, as well as a serious social injustice.
Roe v. Wade established the unborn child as a commodity and sole possession of the maternal parent, leading to consequent disrespect for the rights of the unborn, such as attempts at human cloning and embryonic stem cell experimentation.
Dishonoring the Creator, a cooperator with the parents in giving human life, should be thoughtfully included as a consequence of legalized abortion.
I leave it to the viewer to add to this listing. I suggest a simple index for judging what might be entered there: Has any individual, or has our society, improved in happiness because of Roe v. Wade? If not, why not? E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Reprinted from November 29, 2001:
Comment: I don't mean to be disrespectful of what you are doing. I just don't see why you waste your time worrying about cloning. It is problematic whether anyone ever has cloned a human being or ever will. The big thing that does exist is the very obvious and open killing of human beings by abortion. In my opinion that is what you should be working on, full time.
Reply: Your comment is well taken. I sometimes ask myself why I instinctively respond to questions concerning embryonic stem-cell research and attempts at human cloning. After all, our initial purpose is to protect the unborn from abortion. I've even thought of how few are being killed by these more-recent atrocities, in comparison with the million and a half of our brothers and sisters who are being killed each year in our country by abortion.
What can I say! Unfortunately Roe v. Wade is not a popular subject. It appears that we have very few listeners for the fact that Roe v. Wade is the logical cause of current disrespect for human life and its unique dignity. Yet we have many who are anguishing over the dealers in human flesh: the embryonic stem-cell merchants and the cloners. Perhaps it is less gruesome to hear about those things, enhanced as they are by the mystique of "science" and the wistful promise of wide-spread cures to come?
But isn't that how abortion was merchandized into legality! Not the killing, of course, but the "women's rights" thing. Now that the killing of identifiable babies is firmly established by the "legislation" of the Court, who could disapprove the killing of what are hardly babies at all, and "for the benefit of the sick!" The eager merchants of human "body parts" will be given their niche in the shabbiness of recent history, directly under the shrine of Roe - unless enough thoughtful citizens speak up to prevent it.
This is why we seemingly digress from our primary concern of defending the unborn against the attack of Roe v. Wade. We do not digress, however. Our efforts are being applied against the logical extensions of Roe v. Wade, as they ooze themselves into our 21st Century and, so, against Roe itself. We accomplish this by encouraging our viewers to think, in this instance, from the debilitating effects to that infamous cause, which proclaims for the world to see that our brother or sister, waiting to be born, is "not a person in the full sense."
We invite you, our viewers, to read the Roe v. Wade decision and to judge it for yourselves. Also, you may wish to read our comments, in Section 9 of this web site. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Current interest from our archives:
December 31, 1999
In a previous Comment to your page, the writer agrees with your assertion that God's rights over his creation are infringed upon by abortion. I can understand that better now, from your Section #2, where you show that parents contribute only to their child's body, the soul having to come from God. I hadn't thought about this before, though I always knew that, in some way, God had a hand in making me. I wish that the Supreme Court would have thought about this. They would have seen that the offspring is not solely the mother's property to dispose of, if she wishes, but also belongs to God.
Reply: We appreciate your input! It is not apparent to me, as an individual, that the Court would be interested in our claim for God's right over the lives of human offspring. Most likely, this claim would be declared irrelevant in a court of law, whose business is limited to the tangibles of daily, physical and mundane existence... in a court where the tangibles do not include the right of the child's father to defend the life of his child.
You might ask why we propose claims which are not likely to impress the Court. We would reply that courts, sometime in the future, will be constituted from persons, such as yourself, who have thoughtfully learned the need for objective standards of individual and social behavior. These standards can be reestablished in our nation only when allowance is made for God's place in the every-day lives of our nation. If we can be of some help toward that eventuality, we will have fulfilled our purpose.
December 11, 1999
Question: In this web page you speak of morality and even, sometimes, of God. I have found no mention of religion. Wouldn't religion be a strong defense against abortion?
Reply: Many thanks for your thoughtful observation! I readily agree with your suggestion that religion could be called upon to oppose abortion and, on the positive side of the coin, to promote respect for human life.
Religion, as commonly perceived, finds its persuasive force in revelation, truths revealed by God and accepted, through faith, by the believer. Our page is an attempt to show, not by revelation, but by human thinking, that respect for human life is reasonable in itself, and is good for us as individuals and as a society, whereas abortion is unreasonable in itself and affects us hurtfully.
Perhaps we have not expressed ourselves in these very words, but using them now might help you to understand why we are concerned with morality, rather than with religion. The human being's right-to-life pertains to justice, and we speak of justice as pertaining to morality. But the norm of moral conduct we propose here is that which is imposed upon us by our human intelligence, rather than by revelation. There is no conflict here, since truth, whether naturally acquired by the human intellect or supernaturally revealed, cannot contradict itself. We are speaking of two levels of reality which, though different, complement one another.
At this point, you might insist that justice and morality belong to the practice of religion. I would agree that they do! But they also belong to the exercise of good, old-fashioned commonsense, the process of reasoning, which all humans have in common, even those who are non-believers.
We do not speak of abortion as a religious problem, needing revelation for its solution. Yet, we do speak of God, because morality is the measure of human activity in terms of God's perspective, judging it conformable or non-conformable to the design imposed upon us by our Creator. We speak of "natural law," which is nothing other than that design presented to us through our human intelligence.
To add further light on this reply to your question, I leave you with an insight given us by Aristotle. I paraphrase his thought: The purpose of our intellect is to enable us to perceive the order which exists in the world of nature and, once we have perceived it, enables us to introduce order into our own lives.
November 23, 1999
Comment: My comment might seem strange to your science-minded readers, but it makes sense to me. In Section #1, you speak of abortion as an infringement on God's rights over His creation. It seems to me that this is your strongest point in defense of the unborn person from the time of conception, since God is already at work in each of us at our conception.
Reply: Well said! For those who are conscious of God's prerogatives of authorship (his authority over what he had authored) and are disposed to accept the demands of that authority, this would be an all-sufficient argument in defense of the unborn from the time of conception.
In our presentation, we feel a need to explain God's reason why the life, begun with his help at conception, must not be interfered with. This is why we demonstrate that life to be the life of a fellow human being. And it is because of the unique, innate character of the human individual that his or her right to life is to be respected.
We would wish that even those who, for whatever reason, do not include the Creator's plan in their thinking, would attempt to see a need to protect a fellow human being. At the least, we would like to urge responsible caution against harming the conceptus on the part of those who have no evidence which could conclusively deny his or her human personhood, a situation which we see in the Roe v. Wade decision. (See Section #9)
November 5, 1999
Question: I agree with your conclusion in Section 9, when you say that the Court acted unethically in deciding against the life of the conceptus, while being uncertain whether it is or is not a human being. Is Ethics a responsibility of courts, or are the courts concerned only with law?
Reply: Ethics is everyone's responsibility! We are all accountable for our actions. A reasonable norm of behavior is necessary for defining acceptable behavior on the part of individuals and society. Ethics is the rational proclamation of that norm of conduct.
Courts tend to make new decisions based on previously approved decisions (precedents.) But courts should be expected to examine those precedents ethically and apply them in a reasonable and fair manner. E.R.
Question: Why does our nation permit this Roe v. Wade decision to go unchallenged? When I first heard of it I could not believe that our government said that it is legal for parents to kill their own baby before it is born. I still think it is wrong to do that.
Reply: Roe v. Wade has been challenged right from the beginning. In fact two of the Justices, Rhenquist and White, dissented from the opinion of the other seven members of the Court. Constitutional lawyers, from the principles of Jurisprudence, have shown it to be a bad decision. States have tried to offset some of its harmful effects, by enacting laws. Individuals and groups of citizens have protested the decision and have reduced its effectiveness by aiding parents with distressful pregnancies, helping them to choose life for their offspring.
You seem to be asking why these efforts have not done away with Roe v. Wade. It might help you to remember that the nation is us, "We, the People!" It is likely that we, which means more of us, will have to improve our moral sense of respect for human life, before Roe v. Wade will be done away with. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor’s Note: In the 1992 Casey decision, the U.S. Supreme Court claimed inability to reverse Roe v. Wade because women had become accustomed to having abortion as part of their lifestyle and the Court was not free to deprive them of it. If this same argument had been applied to the “Jim Crow” laws in the early part of the Twentieth Century, courtesy of the Dred Scott decision, those laws would still be in force today.
Comment: The Dred Scott culture had become accustomed to preferential treatment, yet was able to survive the transition from personal injustice for black persons to social justice for all. This is a strong argument in favor of your position. I am inclined to agree that the Casey court’s judgment of our current society is overly patronizing and therefore incorrect. Even in today’s society, perhaps more degenerate than that of the “Jim Crow” era, it should be tolerable for most citizens, including most women, to withstand the transition from killing their unborn, to nurturing them instead.
Just in passing, it is curious that bad laws, and even unjust laws, should not be repealed, simply because of their duration. The title of such behavior by a court is “stare decisis,” an expression from the Latin: Let stand what has already been decided. It is an argument to be used used reasonably only under limited circumstances. If the repealing of a bad law, here and now, would bring worse evils in its wake, it may be better to let the evil law stand, for the time being. These were not the circumstances in Casey. The abortion lifestyle that the Court deemed worthy of preserving is not proportionate to the hurtfulness of what they were tolerating, namely, Roe v. Wade.
"Stare decisis" does not apply to Roe because new evidence shows that decision to be at fault in its limited knowledge of embryonic and fetal development from the time of conception and, especially, in its expressed ignorance of the unborn individual's humanity. Further, the Court gave no consideration to the inherent hurtfulness to women, now called "abortion syndrome," being experienced by many who have undertaken the experience of abortion.
Becoming accustomed to killing ones unborn and feeling a necessity for doing it, is also a curious matter. Something so radical to the welfare of the society as human reproduction ought not be left to the whim and fancy of the few individuals who might not have found a place for the completion of reproduction in their individual lives. The society would have no complaint if those persons were to refrain from reproduction, but the society should not sanction the killing of the offspring resulting from their reproduction having been initiated. Such would be to fail in ones duty to ones neighbors waiting to be born into the society.
In Casey, the U.S. citizens were also told by the Court that a reversal of Roe would cause a lack of confidence in the country’s system of justice and, therefore, was not to be undertaken. Does this evaluation of the country’s commonsense and sense of decency justify the continuation of the unjust ruling called Roe v. Wade? Or is it an arbitrary ploy of a court overly impressed with its own significance, and negligent of its limitations?
Let Roe be examined in the light of day, its fifty million killings. And then discard it. Let the Court admit that its inhumane experiment has failed. Then let the people of the nation prove that instead of collapsing they can rise, as does the legendary phoenix from the ashes, in this case, the ashes of a misguided arm of national justice. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editorial Note: In tribute to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist for his keen sensitivity to truth and justice, we invite him to speak for himself, in his courageous dissent against Roe v. Wade:
REHNQUIST, J., Dissenting Opinion
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
410 U.S. 113 Roe v. Wade
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS
No. 70-18 Argued: December 13, 1971 --- Decided: January 22, 1973
MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST, dissenting.
The Court's opinion brings to the decision of this troubling question both extensive historical fact and a wealth of legal scholarship. While the opinion thus commands my respect, I find myself nonetheless in fundamental disagreement with those parts of it that invalidate the Texas statute in question, and therefore dissent.
I
The Court's opinion decides that a State may impose virtually no restriction on the performance of abortions during the first trimester of pregnancy. Our previous decisions indicate that a necessary predicate for such an opinion is a plaintiff who was in her first trimester of pregnancy at some time during the pendency of her lawsuit. While a party may vindicate his own constitutional rights, he may not seek vindication for the rights of others. Moose Lodge v. Irvis, 407 U.S. 163 (1972); Sierra, Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972). The Court's statement of facts in this case makes clear, however, that the record in no way indicates the presence of such a plaintiff. We know only that plaintiff Roe at the time of filing her complaint was a pregnant woman; for aught that appears in this record, she may have been in her last trimester of pregnancy as of the date the complaint was filed.
Nothing in the Court's opinion indicates that Texas might not constitutionally apply its proscription of abortion as written to a woman in that stage of pregnancy. Nonetheless, the Court uses her complaint against the Texas statute as a fulcrum for deciding that States may [p172] impose virtually no restrictions on medical abortions performed during the first trimester of pregnancy. In deciding such a hypothetical lawsuit, the Court departs from the longstanding admonition that it should never "formulate a rule of constitutional law broader than is required by the precise facts to which it is to be applied." Liverpool, New York & Philadelphia S.S. Co. v. Commissioners of Emigration, 113 U.S. 33, 39 (1885). See also Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U.S. 288, 345 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring).
II
Even if there were a plaintiff in this case capable of litigating the issue which the Court decides, I would reach a conclusion opposite to that reached by the Court. I have difficulty in concluding, as the Court does, that the right of "privacy" is involved in this case. Texas, by the statute here challenged, bars the performance of a medical abortion by a licensed physician on a plaintiff such as Roe. A transaction resulting in an operation such as this is not "private" in the ordinary usage of that word. Nor is the "privacy" that the Court finds here even a distant relative of the freedom from searches and seizures protected by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which the Court has referred to as embodying a right to privacy. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967).
If the Court means by the term "privacy" no more than that the claim of a person to be free from unwanted state regulation of consensual transactions may be a form of "liberty" protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, there is no doubt that similar claims have been upheld in our earlier decisions on the basis of that liberty. I agree with the statement of MR. JUSTICE STEWART in his concurring opinion that the "liberty," against deprivation of which without due process the Fourteenth [p173] Amendment protects, embraces more than the rights found in the Bill of Rights. But that liberty is not guaranteed absolutely against deprivation, only against deprivation without due process of law. The test traditionally applied in the area of social and economic legislation is whether or not a law such as that challenged has a rational relation to a valid state objective. Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U.S. 483, 491 (1955). The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment undoubtedly does place a limit, albeit a broad one, on legislative power to enact laws such as this. If the Texas statute were to prohibit an abortion even where the mother's life is in jeopardy, I have little doubt that such a statute would lack a rational relation to a valid state objective under the test stated in Williamson, supra. But the Court's sweeping invalidation of any restrictions on abortion during the first trimester is impossible to justify under that standard, and the conscious weighing of competing factors that the Court's opinion apparently substitutes for the established test is far more appropriate to a legislative judgment than to a judicial one.
The Court eschews the history of the Fourteenth Amendment in its reliance on the "compelling state interest" test. See Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 406 U.S. 164, 179 (1972) (dissenting opinion). But the Court adds a new wrinkle to this test by transposing it from the legal considerations associated with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to this case arising under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Unless I misapprehend the consequences of this transplanting of the "compelling state interest test," the Court's opinion will accomplish the seemingly impossible feat of leaving this area of the law more confused than it found it. [p174]
While the Court's opinion quotes from the dissent of Mr. Justice Holmes in Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 74 (1905), the result it reaches is more closely attuned to the majority opinion of Mr. Justice Peckham in that case. As in Lochner and similar cases applying substantive due process standards to economic and social welfare legislation, the adoption of the compelling state interest standard will inevitably require this Court to examine the legislative policies and pass on the wisdom of these policies in the very process of deciding whether a particular state interest put forward may or may not be "compelling." The decision here to break pregnancy into three distinct terms and to outline the permissible restrictions the State may impose in each one, for example, partakes more of judicial legislation than it does of a determination of the intent of the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The fact that a majority of the States reflecting, after all, the majority sentiment in those States, have had restrictions on abortions for at least a century is a strong indication, it seems to me, that the asserted right to an abortion is not "so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental," Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 105 (1934). Even today, when society's views on abortion are changing, the very existence of the debate is evidence that the "right" to an abortion is not so universally accepted as the appellant would have us believe.
To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. As early as 1821, the first state law dealing directly with abortion was enacted by the Connecticut Legislature. Conn.Stat., Tit. 22, §§ 14, 16. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth [p175] Amendment in 1868, there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion.[n] While many States have amended or updated [p176] their laws, 21 of the laws on the books in 1868 remain in effect today. [n2] Indeed, the Texas statute struck down today was, as the majority notes, first enacted in 1857, [p177] and "has remained substantially unchanged to the present time." Ante at 119.
There apparently was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any of the other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. The only conclusion possible from this history is that the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter.
III
Even if one were to agree that the case that the Court decides were here, and that the enunciation of the substantive constitutional law in the Court's opinion were proper, the actual disposition of the case by the Court is still difficult to justify. The Texas statute is struck down in toto, even though the Court apparently concedes that, at later periods of pregnancy Texas might impose these self-same statutory limitations on abortion. My understanding of past practice is that a statute found [p178] to be invalid as applied to a particular plaintiff, but not unconstitutional as a whole, is not simply "struck down" but is, instead, declared unconstitutional as applied to the fact situation before the Court. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356"]118 U.S. 356 (1886); 118 U.S 356 (1886); Street v. New York, 394 U.S. 576 (1969).
For all of the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist b.1924 d. 2005
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Reprinted from May 8, 2000:
Question: You speak strongly against the Court's use of the expression: "potential human being." Is it because you see this as a ploy for denying, or at least questioning, human existence at conception?
Reply: Our first objection to the expression "potential human being" is that it has no corresponding reality in the concrete universe. For a more detailed explanation, may I refer you to Section 3.
For this moment, keep in mind that a potentiality (capability) has to exist in, and be possessed by, a subject. This subject must be capable of possessing it. A doorknob, for example, could not have the capability of reproducing itself, because it is not a living thing.) To say that something has the capability of doing something, we would have to demonstrate compatibility between that something and the supposed capability.
There are two different situations in which potentialities can be considered. In the first, the subject having the potentiality continues to exist in its own nature after the potentiality has been actualized. An embryonic rabbit, for example, has the capability for reproduction. Time and further physical development will be required for that potentiality to become actualized. It is the same rabbit, individually and specifically, which in its embryonic condition had only the potentiality to reproduce, that is now actually a parent.
That which is possessed potentially must be rooted in the kind of thing which is capable of possessing its actuality. If something had the potential for acting, even in the distant future, as a human, it would already have to have been a human to possess that potentiality.
In the second situation, if it were possible for something to have the "potential for being a human," it would cease to exist as soon as the potential is actualized. (The something would have been replaced by a human being.)
But nothing in the natural world has the capability of becoming something of another kind, that is, having a different nature. Its only capability, in the realm of being, is to continue being what it already is. The biologist notes that there is no transition from one species to another. Even Darwin's observed changes were always from one variety to another, within the species. (When he spoke in "Origin of Species," despite its title, he was speaking of the origin of varieties within the species.)
A special problem enters into this second situation, wherein something of one specific identity (nature) is said to become something which has a different nature. Examined carefully, it can be seen that there are no examples of such a transition ever having taken place in our natural world. We must be careful not to assume that we have an example of a transition from the potential to the actual, by saying that "the first something" had a potential for becoming "the other something" (that the potential is in one subject and its actualization is in another.)
If it were said that sodium has the capability of becoming table salt (sodium chloride) we would see no basis for the claim. Left to itself, sodium never becomes table salt. It is only when sodium interacts chemically with chlorine that table salt is produced. In the process, both the sodium and chlorine lose their individual and specific identities in favor of the compound.
It has been suggested that the sperm and the ovum are "potential human beings." In the same sense as in the chemistry example, neither becomes a human being. At conception both lose their identities in favor of the new, single individual product, the "conceptus," which has a nature quite different for either of theirs.
Another problem: Those who assume that the product resulting from the natural fusion of the sperm and the ovum is "only a potential human being," must embrace the problem of how that potentiality is ever to be actualized. See how Aristotle-------- attempted to handle this problem.
It is our position that there is nothing in the world of nature which could possess the capability of becoming a human being. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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"Right to life" is the most fundamental ethical expression encountered in the abortion debate. Even apart from that context, right to life has always been an essential concept in the definition of the human being. The U.S. Declaration of Independence is witness to the right to life as the basic inalienable right given by the Creator to each individual of the human race. Here, we present the ethical thinking which underlies the human right to life: Because the conceptus of human parentage is a human being, he or she has a right to life.
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Reprinted from August 9, 2004. In our opinion, the substantial argument is still the same.
Editor’s note: Stem cells may be defined as minimally differentiated cells that, in their proper environment, may divide and produce cells that are further differentiated, according to the needs of the organism. The biology and the ethics of stem cell research can be summarized briefly in these few words:
As to the ethics, stem cells taken from mature human tissues (adult stem cells) and those from other sources, such as the discarded umbilical cord, may be used for purposes of healing, since the willing donor is not harmed by giving the gift. Stem cells may not be taken from embryonic human beings, since such taking kills the embryonic human. This includes all embryonic humans, even those “left over” from IVF procedures.
As for the biology, there are many examples of using adult stem cells for improving the condition of disabled organs and tissues of older human beings. Examples are being multiplied in current research. There are no examples of similar success, in adult tissue, through the use of fetal stem cells.
It should be noted that stem cells, in multi-celled organisms, are natural instruments of development, repair and replacement, all through lifetime, as well as being the stuff of embryonic development. Cuts and abrasions of the skin are repaired with new cells, stimulated into existence by the presence of the damaged cells. The tissues of the body are continuously being renewed by the replacement of cells, old ones being discarded and new ones taking their place. Some of the new cells arise from simple cell division, the daughter cells being identical to the dividing cell. Others arise from less differentiated cells within the tissues of an organ, stimulated by factors of environment within the involved tissue. These cells, in proportion to the minimal degree of differentiation, could be called stem cells. Red blood cells, in the bone marrow, offer an example. Each one begins its history with a less differentiated cell. Several generations of development take place before the mature cell is released into the circulatory system.
As for fetal stem cells not being effective in their interaction with mature tissue, a biologist attuned to the conditions prompting cell differentiation could predict this outcome. Aware of the purposiveness of nature, the biologist knows that cells, in multi-celled organisms, respond only to the needs of the entire organism, conveyed to the cell by the contents of their surrounding, liquid environment. They divide and differentiate as directed by a design proper to the species of the organism of which they are part. It should be noted that cancer is an exception, cells running beyond the control of the organism and, therefore abnormal and destructive “growth.,” the nature of their malignancy.
It is reasonable here to suggest that a scientist must begin his research by questioning whether his objective is possible, then whether it is probable, and then whether it is feasible. It is the first of these questions that is pertinent here: Can fetal stem cells interact favorably with mature tissue? Experience is showing that there is something like a “generation gap” problem in expecting fetal cells, outside of their natural environment, to continue acting and reacting as though they were in their fetal environment. It might be said here that the fetal stem cell does not know the language
of its, now foreign, environment and is unable to respond to it.What is sometimes overlooked here is that the organism is not a machine. The internal combustion engine of an early automobile ignites properly oxidized fuel. So does the modern engine. A mechanic would not remove the carburetor from the old engine as a replacement for the fuel injector of the modern one. That is because the part has to be conformed to the design of the whole. The cells of organisms do not respond mechanically. They are guided into action and reaction by the principle of life, named by Aristotle, the “psyche” or soul, which maintains the natural integrity of the living thing. The soul works through material instruments within the organism, such as mentioned above, where the individual cell is “triggered” into action by the contents of its liquid environment.
Bio-engineering has given us many helpful modifications of the human body, noting that the substitutions are always within the range of the possible. Scientists, however, should be willing to admit that everything desirable is not necessarily possible. Time and money and embryonic human lives are being spent, at the urgency of much “hype” and profit-seekers’ demands, but it still seems that a fetal environment cannot be duplicated in mature tissue.
Much of the content of this web site deals, in considerable depth, with the “over-looked aspects of biological problems currently engaging our scientific community. We invite the viewer to study the material and to use it for the advantage of all, the scientists and the grateful beneficiaries of their dedicated service to our human society. The Table of Contents and the listings of Displayed Responses will be of help to the viewer.
We also recommend an excellent and very extensive presentation of the stem cell as it stands before us, and in the midst of our culture, today. It can be found in the first section of The Dallas Morning News, of Sunday, August 8, 2004. The ethical, biological and political issues surrounding the stem cell debate are fairly presented for the advantage of all levels of readership. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Reprinted from May 6, 2004:
Editor’s Note: In facing the serious issue of abortion, the people of the U.S. have been disenfranchised since 1973 by their Supreme Court and their federal district courts. The latest example of this tyranny is seen in the federal judicial system’s readiness to oppose the partial-birth abortion ban recently enacted into law by the federal legislature. In three challenges to that law, federal district courts are currently hearing complaints against it. Eventually their findings will be subject matter for the Supreme Court. With a former ruling of the Supreme Court in mind, Nebraska, how will the federal law fare in the hands of the judicial system?
Reply: There are fine points of difference between the two cases, carefully constructed into the federal ban, by the legislature. Beside that, there is a tangible factor at work in the three district courts that will also be present in the superior hearing. This is the increasing, moral impatience of the U.S. citizenry. The people, through its legislature, had already, twice before, voted a ban against partial-birth abortion. The ban was vetoed in each instance by the Democrat president, Bill Clinton.
It is my hope that the wide-spread and persistent will of the nation’s people will finally impress the district courts and the Supreme Court with its ethical significance. Judges need reliable sources from which to draw wisdom. The American people, in their instinctive feeling for fair play and decency, reinforced by the wisdom of the ages, are a reliable source of guidance in their condemnation of partial-birth abortion.
Another factor at play in the Supreme Court is its commonsense need to review its 1973 decision. Essential, scientific insight into the human status of the unborn of human parentage from the time of conception, has been multiplied. Is the Court willing to continue sanctioning the killing of the unborn whom they should see now, in highest probability, to be our fellow human beings!
Add to this the documented social significance of post-abortion syndrome. In 1973 the Court did not anticipate this cruel and disabling consequence for women resulting from the easy availability of abortion. Is it not time for the Court to see that the supposed advantages of legalized abortion are far outweighed by the very real hurts being experienced by our individuals and our society because of it?
You may notice that I am trying hard to believe that we are a people who have the honesty to admit our mistakes and to amend them. Social experiments, both good and bad, are parts of our history and this one, lasting a third of a century, has run its course. “We, the People,” have spoken We have proclaimed our right to care for our brothers and sisters who are waiting to be born. We protest the claim of parents that the unborn child is their personal property and may be disposed of at will. We fault our Supreme Court for having misled those parents into the absurd conclusion that abortion is a valid choice. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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With John Roberts as the newly nominated candidate for Justice O'Conner's seat, this article from our displayed responses 2003 is reprinted.
Editor’s Note: Because of the possible resignation of one or more of the Supreme Court justices, the abortion decision, Roe v. Wade, is becoming a subject of renewed interest throughout the nation. In Section 9 of this web site, we offer several points of criticism against that decision. One of these is a matter of Ethics. Using the time-honored principle that prohibits acting while in doubt concerning possible harm resulting from the action, we fault the Court for sanctioning the killing of the unborn, after their admission that the unborn might be a human being. Why was this element of common, moral understanding not addressed in the deliberations of the “Roe” Court?
Reply: If I were to say that the Supreme Court is not interested in ethical principles I would be partially correct in my statement. The immediate concern of the Court is not with Ethics, the science of right and wrong. What interests them is what previous courts have decided, pertinent to their present case. These decisions are called “precedents.” They are the building blocks of any court’s current decision. A court seems to presume that precedents are ethically sound and need no moral examination. In the case of Roe v. Wade, the careless handling a precedent led to the absurd decision of its Court.
The precedent was “Griswold,” a decision that forbade the state of Connecticut to criminalize the sale of contraceptives. The Court had claimed infringement of what they called “marital privacy.” “Roe” borrowed this newly designed concept of “privacy” and legalized abortion as an extension of that right, to be called the “right to privacy.” There is no logical connection between “Griswold” and “Roe.” The only resemblance is in the reference to human reproduction, “Griswold” proclaiming freedom to prevent conception, and “Roe,” the freedom to kill the product of conception. Under any other pretense there is no justification for attempting to validate “Roe” by invoking “Griswold.” In objective reality, the two cases involve non-identical subject matters, and circumstances that are not similar. See Section 9.
Getting back to the ethical principle of “not acting in doubt,” the Court professed ignorance about the beginning of a human individual’s life. Yet, in the face of that admission, they declared the mother’s “right” to kill her unborn, without interference from anyone, even from the father of the unborn. In plain language, though implicitly, the Court is saying to the mother: Human or not, you may proceed with the killing. Remember, though, that it is your decision, not ours. This phrasing of the scenario, however, would not excuse the Court from its complicity in the killing. They are providing the availability of occasion and the misleading atmosphere conducive to the killing.
The “Roe” court, not finding a precedent for establishing the beginning of a human individual’s life, should not have excused themselves from the task of formulating that missing element. Evidently the question had never been encountered previously but because it is an essential element in the “Roe” court’s deliberations, it was the duty of the Court to face the problem. They should have either established the factual definition of the beginning of a human individual’s life, or should have placed their decision “on hold” until the fact would have been ascertained.
After all, that’s the very question that distinguishes Roe v. Wade from any case which had preceded it: May a woman kill her unborn? The Court asked: Is the unborn a human being or not? Admitting that they could not answer their own question, the Court should have said, simply: Since we don’t know whether the unborn is human or not, we must presume the good of life and abstain from the possible evil of death. In other words: The mother may not kill her unborn, because, in so doing, she may be killing a fellow human being.
If the Court had been ethically alert, Roe v. Wade would not have become an instrument of death. We should examine “Roe” and revise it in light of the moral principles of right and wrong, along with the wealth of new, scientific knowledge concerning the beginning of a human being’s life, acquired during the thirty years since the drafting of the “Roe” decision. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor's Note: Here is a glimpse of "the big picture" in which Roe v. Wade is the principal focus.
The Women of Roe v. Wade
Mary Ann Glendon
To understand fully the incalculable effects of Roe v. Wade it is necessary (though of course not sufficient) to understand the historical and legal context in which it occurred. When the decision came down in February 1973, the nation was embroiled in the Vietnam War and President Nixon had just begun his second term. Just around the corner, but unforeseen by any of us, were the fall of Saigon and the President's resignation. Nor did most of us perceive how, all around us, the social environment was being transformed by a sudden breakdown in traditional norms governing sexual behavior and a sharp rise in family disruption. It would be years before professional demographers took the full measure of that cultural revolution, and when they did, even they were startled. Here is how one of them, looking back on the period, summarized what happened: "It is exceedingly rare in the history of populations that sudden changes appear across the entire set of demographic indicators. Yet in barely fifteen years, starting in 1965, the birth rate and the marriage rate in all the industrialized countries tumbled, while divorces and births outside marriage increased rapidly. All those changes were substantial, with increases or decreases of more than 50 percent."With hindsight, we can now see that in February 1973, the U.S. (along with other affluent nations) was a few years into a massive social experiment. No society was prepared for that experiment, and no society has yet adjusted to its consequences. It was in that time of social and political turmoil that a pair of cases involving abortion were presented to the Supreme Court. The better known case, Roe v. Wade, challenged an old Texas statute that banned abortion except where the mother's life was in danger. The other, Doe v. Bolton, challenged a more modern statute patterned on the Model Penal Code drafted by the prestigious American Law Institute. The statute in Doe permitted abortion under certain conditions, but subjected it to regulation.
Though Roe got all the attention, I think it is fair to say that Doe, decided on the same day, was the more ominous of the two decisions. It was Doe that signaled the doom of legislative efforts to provide even modest protection of unborn life--statutes of the type that are in force in most other liberal democracies (where the regulation of abortion has largely been left to be worked out in the ordinary democratic processes of bargaining, education, persuasion, and voting). And it was Doe's broad definition of "health" as "well-being" that the Court would later use to strike down even bans on the cruel procedure known as partial-birth abortion.
Among legal scholars, what attracted the most attention about Roe and Doe were the separation of powers and federalism issues. Leading constitutional lawyers such as Paul Freund and Archibald Cox were critical of the Court majority for striking down the statutes of all fifty states with so little warrant in constitutional text or precedent. Even Court watchers who favored legislative liberalization of abortion law were inclined to agree with dissenting Justice Byron White that the case represented an extraordinary judicial power grab. As for pro-life lawyers, most of them did not foresee how far the Supreme Court would extend Roe and Doe over the years--even to the point of striking down laws designed to protect late-term, healthy, viable babies. For years, the pro-life movement poured much of its energy into litigation, confident that Roe and Doe would eventually be limited, if not expressly overruled.
To be sure, there were a few visionaries, but their fears were generally dismissed. Who but a madman or a prophet would have imagined, as novelist Walker Percy did, that a whole industry of profitable "Qualitarian Centers" would spring up, where, as one of Percy's characters explained, doctors would respect "the right of an unwanted child not to have to endure a life of suffering"? Who but a madman or a prophet--or an artist who sees more deeply into things than the rest of us--would have imagined, as Percy did in a 1971 novel, that state governments might recognize a right to die, and that arrangements would be made for the sick and elderly to push a button that would waft them away into a "happy death" in Michigan, a "joyful exitus" in New York, or a "luanalu-hai" in Hawaii?
It's something of a puzzle why the public has never really grasped how extreme the legal treatment of abortion is in the United States. (Even Sweden, the poster country for women's equality and liberal attitudes toward human sexuality, strictly regulates abortion after the eighteenth week of pregnancy.) Two factors, I believe, combined to obscure the degree to which the U.S. has become careless about protecting human life at its fragile beginnings and endings. First, journalists and other opinion leaders have persisted in misdescribing Roe v. Wade as a case that permits abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, but permits regulation thereafter. That is a flagrant misstatement, for Roe permits no regulation in the interest of protecting the unborn child for the first two trimesters. Moreover, when Roe is read with Doe, third-trimester restrictions are effectively ruled out as well--for Roe's dictum that such restrictions might be permissible if they did not interfere with the mother's health was negated by Doe's definition of "health" as "well-being."
The second factor that enabled the radical character of these decisions to pass under the radar is that most people just couldn't believe the Supreme Court would do such a thing. When I have explained the extreme permissiveness of American abortion law to people, one of the most common reactions is: "That can't be right." I've found that most people--including many law professors--have a great deal of difficulty wrapping their minds around the idea that the Court would permit the intentional destruction of a healthy infant who was capable of living outside his or her mother's body, when the mother's health (in the ordinary meaning of that word) is not in serious danger. That's why polls show that the same people who say they approve of Roe v. Wade also say they believe that abortion should not be permitted except for grave reasons, and that it should never be permitted after viability except to save the mother's life.
What finally helped to raise public consciousness was the most shocking decision thus far, Stenberg v. Carhart (2000), in which the Court struck down a state statute that would have banned partial-birth abortion. By 2000, technology had advanced to the point where many parents proudly displayed ultrasound photos of pre-born babies. Thus, Justice Stephen Breyer's callousness about something so close to infanticide highlighted as never before the discrepancy between the rigid, lethal logic of the Court majority and the more complex moral sentiments of most Americans.
One other aspect of the history of the 1973 decisions demands comment. When reading Roe and Doe, it is surprising to see how little they have to say about protecting women and how much they have to do with protecting doctors. That is because much of the pressure for these decisions came from the medical profession. By 1973, with the sexual revolution well underway, licensed doctors were increasingly performing elective abortions for their patients, but they were worried about criminal and civil liability. Justice Harry Blackmun, who had been counsel for the Mayo Clinic, wrote much of the majority opinion in Roe at the Mayo Clinic library. As is well known, he grounded the decision on the supposed "right to privacy" in the physician-patient relationship. It was not until years later that the Court majority described abortion as a woman's right, and then shifted in Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992) from the much-criticized privacy ground to treating abortion as an individual liberty.
Part of what emboldened the Court majority to go as far as it did in the line of cases extending Roe and Doe was the embrace of unlimited abortion rights by the peculiar form of feminism that took shape in the 1970s. To earlier feminists who had fought for the vote and for fair treatment in the workplace, it had seemed obvious that the ready availability of abortion would facilitate the sexual exploitation of women. Women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton regarded free love, abortion, and easy divorce as disastrous for women and children. They would have regarded women who actively promoted those causes as foolish or deranged.
What made 1970s feminism such an anomaly was a puzzling combination of two things that don't ordinarily go together: anger against men and promiscuity; man-hating and man-chasing.
I remember that it was around this time that some of my students at Boston College Law School began to ask me if I was a feminist. My answer, then and now, is yes--if that means I am specially concerned about a range of issues that disproportionately affect women. But, as the mother of three young children in those days, I had to admit I was baffled by the groups that were purporting to speak for women. Organized feminism had almost nothing to say to women like me who were trying to juggle work and family obligations. In fact, many of its spokeswomen went out of their way to denigrate marriage and motherhood. Moreover, as a lawyer, I could see that the chief beneficiaries of the divorce reforms they backed so enthusiastically were ex-husbands and second wives.
The feminism of the 1970s was decisively shaped by a demographic phenomenon that brought heartbreak and disappointment to two large groups of women. The first group was the cohort of women born in the early years of the post-World War II baby boom. These young women were caught in what demographers call the "marriage squeeze"--the shortage of potential mates that resulted from the sharp jump in birthrates that began in 1947. There simply were not enough baby boys born during the war years to provide husbands for the bumper crop of girls born in 1947, '48, and '49 (given the then-custom for women to marry men a year or two older than themselves). When these girls started dating (in the 1960s), there were 1.7 million more of them than there were men in the age group where they ordinarily would have expected to find husbands. Just imagine what a painful experience that must have been for young women who had been socialized for domesticity, girls who had grown up in the 1950s to expect life as it was portrayed in the Ladies Home Journal and Good Housekeeping. They had no idea why things weren't working out the way they were supposed to.
The increased competition for mates, coinciding with the arrival of the birth control pill, helps to explain a number of things, such as the collapse of sexual taboos as young women began to offer free samples and to pursue men previously considered off limits (such as other women's husbands). The ripple effects were vast and affected nearly everyone. Inevitably, there were abuses by men of their suddenly dominant position in the mating market. Many women of Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug's generation found themselves alone and in difficult circumstances when their husbands divorced them to marry younger women. That created a second large group of angry women, and 1970s feminism was off to the races.
The unusual conditions that gave rise to that particular form of feminism have long since passed, and thus it is hardly surprising that most women today are looking for something more responsive to their needs and aspirations. Betty Friedan, the smartest of the old guard, was the first of their number to see the writing on the wall. In a 1996 piece for the New Yorker, she warned organized feminism that "as a number of recent polls have made clear, the urgent concerns of women today are not gender issues but jobs and families." Two years later in Time, she again advised official feminism to get over its fixation with gender, saying, "All the sex stuff is stupid. The real problems have to do with women's lives and how you put together work and family."
Friedan was right that problems of work and family are central concerns of many women, and there are signs that she and others have succeeded in moving the feminist establishment to pay closer attention to those matters. But old-line feminism still has a tin ear for listening to women with children, as evidenced by their main solution to the problem of combining work and family life: the socialization of child care. Ironically, the old feminism brought to light how much of women's work has been undervalued, but then bought into that very same disrespect by acting as though the only work that matters is market work.
It's no wonder that four out of five young women today are so turned off by these negative attitudes toward men, marriage, and motherhood that they reject even the term "feminism." The title of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's book Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life, taken from her interviews with dozens of women in all walks of life, says it all.
It is now apparent to nearly everyone that what Betty Friedan calls the "sex stuff" does matter, and that it matters very much. As the bills for the sexual revolution pile up, it looks as if the late nineteenth and early twentieth century feminists were closer to the mark. The price for the nation's prolonged bacchanal has been high, especially for women and children. There's been a high cost in terms of women's health, including an epidemic of infertility caused by sexually transmitted infections, and a startling rise in cervical and oral cancers among young women from the same cause.
Most women have understood all along that Roe v. Wade would not, as Friedan once predicted, "make women whole." For the past thirty years, all three leading polling organizations have consistently told us that a large majority of Americans, women even more than men, disapprove of the majority of abortions that are performed in this country. In recent years, that disapproval has increased significantly. The latest Zogby poll, reported in November 2002, reveals not only that Americans in general are becoming more conservative in their views about abortion, but that young people are significantly more pro-life than their parents. The strongest supporters of abortion rights in the United States, as any nineteenth-century feminist could have predicted, are not women--but men in the age group of eighteen to twenty-five. Nevertheless, the most pro-life part of the population is people under thirty.
Why, then, a curious person might ask, has that widely shared sentiment not tempered the extremism of American abortion law? In part it's probably because the Supreme Court has left so little room for expression of popular will through legislation. In part it's probably also because so much confusion exists about what the law really says. But there may be other, deeper reasons. With almost a million-and-a-half abortions a year for thirty years, we have become a society where nearly everyone has been touched by abortion, if not personally, then through friends and family members. When we speak about abortion today, we are speaking to women who have had abortions; to men who have asked women to have abortions; to young people who have lost brothers and sisters to abortion; and to the mothers and fathers, friends and neighbors of those women and men. That knowledge often leaves us tongue-tied, at a loss for words, for what to say and how to say it.
That knowledge has made it tempting for countless women and men to take refuge in slogans like: "Who am I to be judgmental?" and the famous "Personally, I'm opposed, but I can't impose my opinions on others."
I have to admit that, back in the 1970s, I was rather uncritical of such phrases. I remember asking the former dean of Boston College, a Jesuit priest, "Father, what do you think about this abortion issue?" He said, "Well you see, Mary Ann, it's very simple. According to Vatican II, abortion is 'an unspeakable moral crime.' But in a pluralistic democracy, we can't impose our moral views on other people." "Oh," I said, "OK."
I know this story doesn't reflect any credit on me, but I mention it to show that many of us just didn't focus on the issue all that closely. I know now that I should have questioned the word "impose." But it took some time before growing numbers of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews stepped forward to point out that when people advance their moral viewpoints in the public square, they are not imposing anything on anyone. They are proposing. That's what citizens do in a democracy--we propose, we give reasons, we vote. It's a very strange doctrine that would silence only religiously grounded moral viewpoints. And it's very unhealthy for democracy when the courts--without clear constitutional warrant--deprive citizens of the opportunity to have a say in setting the conditions under which we live, work, and raise our children.
It was only after I started to look into how controversial issues like abortion and divorce were handled in other liberal democracies that I realized how my dean's slogan has been used not only to silence religiously grounded views, but to silence all opposition to abortion. I should have asked the dean why citizens should have to withhold their moral views on abortion but not on other issues where he did not hesitate to advance religiously grounded moral viewpoints--the Vietnam War, capital punishment, civil rights, and relief of poverty. Years later, I put a related question to the former dean of Harvard Law School. In the mid-1980s, after I had given a talk to the Harvard faculty comparing American abortion law unfavorably with the approaches taken in several other liberal democracies, Dean Al Sacks took me out for lunch and said, "You know, no one in that room agrees with you." Since he had put the point in a friendly, avuncular way, I asked him about something that had long puzzled me. "Why," I asked, "did you and so many other constitutional lawyers stop criticizing the Court's abortion decisions after most of you had been highly critical of Roe v. Wade?" He sighed and gave me a very candid answer that had the ring of truth. "I suppose," he said, "it was because we had been made to understand that the abortion issue was so important to the women in our lives, and it just did not seem that important to most of us."
Today, thirty years after Roe and Doe, polls tell us that the abortion issue is still more important to women than to men. But they also tell us that women's and men's views have changed. For one thing, many of the unintended consequences of the cultural revolution of which these decisions were part have come into clearer view. There is growing awareness that the moral ecology of the country has suffered something like an environmental disaster, and that we are faced with a very complicated clean-up operation.
What makes that task especially difficult now is that the social changes of the past four decades have taken a heavy toll on the nation's human capital. We now live in a culture in which about half of all marriages end in divorce; in which nearly half of all children spend part of their childhood in fatherless homes; in which women and men who put their families first are falling behind economically and professionally; in which many of the nation's youngest citizens are starving for parental time and attention, and often for basic material necessities.
Moreover, though old-line, hard-line feminism has little appeal for today's women, its ideology lives on in law and policy--like light rays from a dead star. The cohort of women most captivated by that ideology now holds influential positions, and the organizations that promote the worst ideas of 1970s feminism continue to be handsomely bankrolled by its chief beneficiaries--the vast, profit-making abortion industry, the sex industry, and the organizations that promote aggressive population control.
Fortunately, however, the times are changing. There are signs that new forms of feminism are emerging to tackle the challenge of renewing the culture. We are hearing more voices of women who are in touch with the real-life needs and aspirations of a broad range of women. We are hearing more voices of women who regard men and women as partners rather than antagonists in the eternal quest for better ways to love and work. We are hearing enough to give us hope that a collaborative, creative effort is underway--an effort to promote a moral ecology that is in keeping with American traditions of welcoming the stranger, caring for the weak and vulnerable, lending a helping hand to the needy, and giving a fresh start to someone who got off on the wrong track.
Skeptics might say that that hope is misplaced. Perhaps so, but hope may be all that we have in an otherwise daunting time.
Mary Ann Glendon is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University. This essay is adapted from a speech given at a Boston College School of Law symposium sponsored by Americans United for Life, and will appear in a forthcoming volume of essays on women and abortion.
Copyright © 2003 First Things 134 (June/July 2003): 14-18.
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Reprinted from September 24, 2004:
Editor's Note: The recent decision, Norma McCorvey v. Hill (pdf), demonstrates again the difficulty of reversing Roe v. Wade from within the system of federal courts. (See opinion of Judge Edith Jones.) What would be required to reverse Roe is to demonstrate that an existing law, enacted prior to Roe, either directly or implicitly opposes Roe. We invite legal-minded viewers to bring such a law to our attention.
Comment: It is my concern that the mechanics of the U.S. judicial system may be impeding the process of justice. The blatant injustice of Roe is self-evident to thinking persons, but evidently not to the courts. The thinking person of good will sees injustice in a court action that sanctions the killing of the unborn in face of the strong possibility that the unborn are human beings. The Roe court professed ignorance about the beginning of a human being's life yet, in that state of substantial doubt, sanctioned the killing of the unborn.
In another instance, reasoning persons see the validity, in fact, the force of law in the age-old presumption that a pregnant woman is carrying a human being within her body. The Roe court ignored the presumption and instituted its opposite, namely, that the unborn is not a human being until proved to be so to the satisfaction of the court. There is no justice here; rather there is manipulation of law at the cost of justice.
Thinking persons, from within the workings of their human nature, have a reliable intuition concerning right and wrong, the stuff of justice. Many governments, from tribal to national, have been founded on the consensus of their constituents, based upon this well-established reality of human experience, called a sense of morality. As commonly accepted by human society, it is known as Natural Law. Formulated into a coherent system of thought and experience, it is called the Science of Ethics.
Courts operate from precedents, that is, prior decisions of courts. Ethics seems not to have a place in the proceedings of the court. One might wonder whether the precedents can be assumed to be ethically sound, or whether they, too, were decided without the benefit of Ethics.
It should be reasonable to expect the Supreme Court to follow the principles of Ethics in all its deliberations. It is reasonable that this could be mandated by the Legislature as a cooperative act of distributed power in governing our nation. It is reasonable that the Supreme Court should have some limits to its prerogatives of subject matter over which it is competent to rule. It should be noted that, currently, the Legislature is drafting a law which would prohibit the federal courts from tampering with the nation's Pledge of Allegiance, to protect it against those who would seek to delete the phrase "under God" from its wording. With reference to Roe, it is difficult to see how the Supreme Court considers itself competent to formulate its own definition of a human being, one that is contrary to the time-honored concept of the whole society.
Precedents can be misinterpreted. The Roe court took Griswold, a decision favoring the unrestricted sale of contraceptives, under the claim of "marital privacy" and turned it into Roe, a decision sanctioning a mother's killing of her unborn.
We invite our viewers in the U.S. to think about the need for ethical consideration on the part of our federal court system, in every one of their decisions. Retroactively, Roe would be a good starting point. Otherwise we continue to compound problems instead of adjudicating their fair solution. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Reprinted from June 22, 2004:
Question: When church people talk to the Supreme Court about the morality of abortion, would the court people listen? Or would they hide behind the First Amendment?
Reply: If a church member were to have the attention of the Court, he or she could probably talk with them about morality and, yes, even religion. The First Amendment would not prohibit that. The Amendment prohibits the establishing of a state religion, such as was had in England, from which the Pilgrims had fled. In the U.S. there is a freedom to practice religion, with no compulsion or restriction by the state. It is interesting to remember that each of the fifty states, in the preamble of its Constitution, recognizes God and invokes divine aid for the well being of its citizens.
Perhaps you are assuming that when people ask the government to be attentive to morality they are proposing the establishment of a religion. Taking a look at the relationship between morality and religion could be of help to you here.
Religion is the mutual relationship between an individual human, or a group of humans, and God. God is accepted by various persons as the ultimate cause of their existence and their continued well being, the designer and giver of their human freedom and, therefore, the one to whom accountability must be rendered. Morality expresses deliberated conformity or lack of conformity to this perceived plan of God.
Morality is a characteristic of human behavior that constitutes and measures the goodness or evil of specific actions. Whatever yardstick is used for the measuring, it becomes the standard of good and evil conduct, as when acting reasonably is said to be good and acting irresponsibly is said to be evil. Underlying the standard is the assumption that there is something objective about right reason and good will, not something arbitrary. Eventually, as history indicates, society generally agrees that humans have in their distinctively human faculties of intellect and free will the ability to know what is reasonable and the corresponding freedom to act accordingly. Criminal law has always been based on this assumption.
Morality and religion are seen as related whenever human accountability terminates in God. This is true whether God is known by human reasoning as the Author of Nature or believed, through revelation, as a Trinity of Divine Persons. The noteworthy point here is that revelation, a supernatural element of religion, is not required for establishing the standard of morality. The standard is deduced by reasoning upon God’s handiwork in the world of nature, revealing his will as to its proper operation. Ethics is the science of drawing such conclusions and applying them to the concrete problems of everyday life.
There is a question whether the basic principles of morality are common to all persons, having religious affiliation or not, since the basic moral dictates are promulgated by the reasoning ability that is common to all human beings. A consensus of the majority, over long periods of time, indicates an affirmative answer. This is in agreement with the notion that humans have been endowed with intelligence to discern what the Creator wishes for their well being, as an aid to the beneficial exercise of free choice.
In this sense, morality plays a role in government. Laws are formulated with an eye to conformity with its principles. For establishing and maintaining good order in society it could not be otherwise, since the moral principles are held as being essential, not arbitrary, in a way similar to the directions in the Operations Manual written by the designer of a delicate machine.
In what sense, if any should morality be separated from government? Surely not the basic moral principles that are common to all human beings, that no religious denomination had invented, yet that all attempt to teach and practice. Surely not the right to lobby on the basis of morality, for or against issues that clearly involve moral principles!
Legalized abortion in the United States presents a problem that relates politics and morality. The problem should not involve religion, except in the sense of individual and group accountability to God for all deliberate individual and group choices. The problem does not require religion in the sense of supernatural revelation.
Protection of the right to life and the right to human dignity pertain to basic morality, the content of which does not require proclamation from any of the churches, a content which, according to a noted churchman, St. Paul, is written on the “fleshy tablets of the human heart.” Churches, however, have a duty to remind the government of its serious obligation to observe the principles of morality whenever it is failing to do so.
In its failure to protect human life and human dignity, to the best of its ability, the government is acting unethically. In its strident disregard for the central principle of its own Declaration of Independence, the inalienable right to life, the government should be reminded of its serious duty to remedy its moral deficiency. The churches, then, without being an established political entity, serve the citizenry of the state by coming forward with such reminders. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Reprinted from January 7, 2005:
Editor’s Note: With the New Year, 2005, beginning to take shape we are challenged to think how life in the U.S. might be affected by the demise of Roe v. Wade.
Comment: My first reaction to your challenge is to see a rapid decline in abortion numbers, regardless of whatever state or federal legislation might follow Roe. The death of Roe would vindicate many citizens, especially women having experienced abortion, in their hard-earned conclusion that abortion is not good for our society. This reaction would be reinforced by the commonsense notion that law is a nation’s way of teaching and, in this instance, that Roe v. Wade was a mistake. The rapid growth in the practice of abortion immediately after 1973 indicates that legal sanction promotes abortion. It is logical to assume that the removal of that sanction would promote a decrease in the practice.
As for legal regulation consequent to the collapse of Roe, it cannot realistically be seen that anything as permissive as Roe could be forthcoming. In the recent national election the people of the nation have spoken on behalf of moral values, and this is a nation governed by its people. They see no justification for legalized abortion and they have become sensitive to the hurtful consequence of its practice. Because of the decreased number of abortions, the U.S. would begin to regain its place of leadership in the community of nations as people able to maintain themselves, socially and economically. Also, just as the bad moral example of the past, under Roe, had misled other nations, so now good example could encourage their reform.
Just as Watergate had awakened an undisciplined society and initiated political reform, so the departure of Roe could prompt a cultural rebirth, centered on respect for the rights of every human individual, especially of those waiting to be born.
In this day of crass interference with the workings of nature, nothing is more needed than respect for nature itself. There could be a return to acceptance of nature’s purpose and a willing conformity to its design. The unborn human would no longer be a guinea pig for the experimenters nor a market of body parts for the supposed benefit of others.
It is pleasing to assume that the greatest reward of a post-Roe world could be an enlightened appreciation of parenthood and of its fruitfulness, the children, our present joy and the future of our society.
It should go without saying that Roe’s absence would leave room for nature’s Author to speak and be heard. And it would leave an appreciative nation free to listen and to accept the truth. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Reprinted from December 11, 2004:
14th. Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Editor’s Note: Because of Roe v. Wade’s non-conformity with ethical principles, the people of the nation have a right to question its credibility. How does the Court justify its decision to act when they knew that serious harm to innocent persons could result from their action?
Reply: Your question refers to the Court’s decision to protect a woman’s disposal of her unborn “conceptus,” (that which had been conceived) not knowing whether or not the “conceptus” is a human being. By admitting that they did not know when the human life of a “conceptus” begins, the Court held open the possibility that it could have begun at conception and, therefore, that every “conceptus” is a human being.
The ethical principle states that in circumstances of uncertainty, a person may not “take chances” of inflicting harm. A familiar example cites an eager hunter who, seeing a bush move, shoots his gun without knowing for sure whether the bush was moved by a deer or by another hunter. The principle is simply phrased: In case of substantial doubt, where harm is possible, a person is not free to act.
The Roe court admitted that, if the defense could establish the humanity of the “conceptus,” the plaintiff’s case would be discarded. It should be noted here that the Court, at this point, inverted the burden of proof. The traditional presumption that a pregnant woman is carrying a human being was negated by the action of the Court, in demanding that the defense must prove the humanity of the "conceptus."
The Roe court, itself, made no representative effort, to determine the identity of the victim of abortion, which is the key question of that particular case. The Court was content to say that no one knows when the human life of the “conceptus” begins and, therefore it should not be expected of the Court to know either. Nor did the Court face what was to them the probability that sometime before birth, the "conceptus" would be human. The Court set no “upper limit” of time for a legal abortion. With that “resolution” of the key matter, the Court proceeded to “grant” legal protection for the mother’s disposal of the “conceptus.”
Ethics is the science of codifying principles of morality as they are perceived by human intelligence and applied to human actions to judge them as being good or evil. Aristotle spoke of this function of intelligence when he said that there are two purposes of the human intellect: first, to enable us to perceive harmonious order in the world of nature and, secondly, to enable us to copy that order into our own lives. It is this commonsense approach to human behavior that is missed in the Roe decision, as we have seen above. The Court overlooked the humanity presumption within pregnancy, a presumption upheld in human culture from the beginning of human history. It seems fair to say that the Court, in its eagerness to get rid of the pregnancy, found it necessary to get rid of the humanity of the "conceptus" first. Such a deliberate masking of the truth must be labeled for what it is, unethical. It should go without saying that Ethics cannot tolerate labeling the values proposed by seekers of legalized abortion as superior to the life of even a probably human "conceptus." Let the Roe court answer for that! E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Reprinted from November 2004:
Question: Now that Scott Peterson has been found guilty of first-degree murder of his wife, Laci, and “… second-degree murder in the death of the son she was carrying” (AP writer Brian Skoloff) it might be a good time for an essay on how the government can assert by implication that the unborn child was in this case a person covered and protected by law, and whose destruction constituted murder, yet the unborn destroyed daily by abortion are not “persons” protected by law. How can we have it both ways?
Who decides whether the fetus/unborn child is a person or not, and under what circumstances? The government? The mother? This situation seems to be an uncomfortably close parallel to the way a significant proportion of the country viewed slaves 150 years ago.
Reply: From the verdict of two murders in this trial, it is evident that both the mother and the unborn child were considered to be human beings. The question now is to determine whether the court’s action could be used to disqualify the legalization of abortion, through the identification of the unborn child as a human person.
As you suggested in your question, it would be schizophrenic of the law to see the unborn, in one instance, to be a human person and, in another, not to be a human person. However, in the Peterson case and in Roe v. Wade the problem of reconciling the two instances is not a simple one. There are subtle differences. In the Peterson case the court proceeded from California’s version of the Unborn Victims Act, which enabled the state to press the murder charge on behalf of the unborn baby. Neither the Unborn Victims Act nor the Peterson court’s action is equivalent to formalizing a law establishing the personhood of the unborn.
Also, it must be remembered that Roe v. Wade is not a legal formalization of the non-personhood of the unborn. The Roe court never declared the unborn not to be a human being. Nor did they define the human person. They were content to say that the unborn is “not a person in the full sense.” Yet, their decision to sanction the killing of the unborn, falsely and only by implication, appears to establish the non-humanity of the unborn. The Court merely stated that no one may interfere with the mother’s “Constitutional right” to dispose of her unborn child. In no realistic manner does Roe v. Wade have any relevance to legislative action that speaks of the unborn of human parentage as “human persons.”
Pausing for a moment, let us suppose that the Peterson court did not have access to an Unborn Victims Act. Suppose that the court were using another criterion according to which the murder charge applies, a criterion already well established. In its commonsense approach to justice, the court could be using the time-honored presumption that what a pregnant woman is carrying within her body is a human being. It should be noted that pregnant women, even from early awareness of pregnancy, traditionally have no doubt about being mothers of human babies. If the court were to proceed from that presumption it might well be successful in pressing the charge of murder in favor of the unborn child.
Whether a federal court could use the presumption of a local, criminal court as a precedent in a human-rights case is another question. Perhaps, indirectly, there could be merit in the suggestion. Would the Supreme Court be willing to follow the Unborn Victims Act model used by this lower-level, criminal court? Or would it be willing to consider the suggested time-honored pregnancy presumption? In either case, that would bring about, very logically, the termination of Roe v. Wade.
In the case of Roe, the Court not only disregarded the time-honored presumption of humanity within the pregnancy. In its place they inverted the burden of proof. The Court demanded proving the humanity of the unborn, and that, by a proof tailored to its own specifications. Did the Court have competence to overturn a presumption that, from time immemorial, had served as the definition of the humanity of the unborn of human parentage? The force of such a presumption should be equivalent to the force of law. Would it not be fair to say that the Roe court should be faulted for breaking the law?
Your question, of who should decide the personhood of the unborn, is a key that could unlock the apparent impenetrability of Roe v. Wade. Does the Supreme Court have the discretionary competence for defining the human person? Justice Antonin Scalia, presently seated on the Court, recently stated that the concept of human personhood is “too fundamental” for the competence of the Supreme Court to handle. In fact, human personhood is not defined in law. The definition of human personhood is taken from common understanding. There are other terms, such as religion, though involved in laws, are not defined but rather enjoy the commonsense understanding of the people.
The same problem could be raised concerning the federal “Unborn Victims Act.” It grants tort claims against the aggressor of the mother for injury to her and consequent damage to her unborn child. However, it is not equivalent to a federal definition of the unborn child as a human person. The aggressor can be charged and penalized for killing the unborn child, because of breaking the law. Whether the killing may be called murder presents another problem, the problem you have asked about: “Who defines the humanity of the unborn?” Should we not have to conclude that the Unborn Victims Act does not define but, rather, presupposes the humanity of the unborn, as perceived in the commonsense, time-honored presumption mentioned above: What a pregnant woman carries in her body is a human person.
In answer to your question, may I suggest that the long-time, common consensus of unprejudiced persons, the instinctive pregnancy presumption mentioned above, should be the definitive criterion of personhood for the unborn. And it should be concretized for all time in a Constitutional amendment, forever to be the law of the land. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor’s Note: With the increase of legalized euthanasia around the world, added to the sanctioned killing of the unborn, and in the midst of a growing disregard for the lives and the values of the “less than perfect,” where do we go from here?
Comment: We might start to answer this question by asking “Is the world no longer able to care for itself, except by scaling down its responsibilities toward its people? Do we feel it necessary to adopt the ethics of the overcrowded lifeboat at this time? If so, let us remember that we may throw overboard only the non-essentials, not the passengers. The question, then, becomes more specific: “Is our lifestyle extravagant?” “Have we a faulty system of priorities?” Or is it that we are no longer able to cope with the artificiality of our present culture? Or is it that we are not conscious of the problem? Or is it that we just don’t care?
In all of this there is an interesting analogy with cellular biology. If a cell expands beyond a certain size, it must either divide or die. That is because the cell’s volume increases by the exponential power of 3, whereas the cell’s surface increases by the lesser power of 2. There will come a time when the permeability of the cell membrane will be insufficient to transfer necessary materials into and out of the cell.
It is profitable to suggest that we may have transformed our current society into a “cell” that, sometime soon, might no longer be able to support itself. We could become a “cell” that had lost contact with reality measured by the world outside itself. The “cell” may be in the process of dying and, instinctively, attempting to save itself by dividing. Unfortunately, the basis of the division is individual autonomy. (Do your own thing!) The contemplated division could not save the “cell” because it would not be a beneficial reordering of its contents. Rather, such selfishness would be a shattering of the “cell’s” potential to survive.
The engines tending to motivate the division of our “cell” are the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death. Under the influence of these forces is a beneficial division likely to occur? Or would the condition merely be worsened, now having two worlds in conflict with one another, rather than one world in conflict within itself?
As another possibility, we might save our “cell” by promptly reducing our present volume of such non-essentials as excessive self-interest, to be replaced by interest in the common good. It could also be helpful to replace conflicting artificiality with the orderliness of nature’s original design. In this sense we might ask ourselves the old-fashioned question: “In our technological smartness, have we grown too big for our britches?”
The answer to our question is, perhaps, another question: “Where do we want to go from here?” E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor’s Note: The quest for human embryonic stem cells, or something similar to them, from sources other than from the living, human embryo is an attempt to conform to the ethical principal “Do no harm.” (The extraction of cells from an early embryo, at the stage of desirability, would kill the embryonic human being and, therefore, would be unethical.) Yet, it could be questioned whether this quest, however well intentioned, might itself be unethical.
The quest for alternate sources of, or substitutes for, human embryonic stem cells faces a record of failure in the use of authentic cells for treating disabilities in adult tissue. (Embryonic stem cells perform only in the environment of a developing human embryo. Anything less than authentic cells should not be expected to do any better. And they could be harmful, by way of side effects. Why, then, spend time and tax monies on a losing venture, one that promises false hope to those who suffer disabilities? Resources would be better spent on adult stem cells, whose worth has been well demonstrated.
The quest for other sources of embryonic stem cells, such as by cloning, raises the question of identifying the products of the quest. What would constitute criteria for establishing that the product is a human embryonic stem cell? Would it not be necessary to identify the cell mass (for example in the South Korean statement, the clone from which the product is extracted,) as being human? A chromosomal configuration proper to humans, replicated into the product from the donor cell’s complement of chromosomes, may not be sufficient to establish the authenticity of the product. Because of a non-material dimension in human reproduction, the question of identification is more complex than merely a biological problem.
Care must be exercised in discussing authentic embryonic stem cells, human life, or even life itself, because of diverse uses of those terms.
The somatic cell, with its nucleus, before removal from the donor, had been part of a human, living body, since it was being vitalized by a human soul (principle of life.) After separation from the donor, there is a question whether that human life endures. The same would be true of the enucleated ovum. When the nuclear transfer has been completed, what soul is vitalizing the presumed clone?
All living organisms have souls. For lesser animals, ensoulment comes spontaneously as gametes unite. For humans, ensoulment requires intervention on the part of nature’s Author. If no human soul vitalizes the alleged clone, it still might be an organism (if some other soul were vitalizing it) or not an organism at all and, certainly, not a human being and, therefore incapable of supplying human, stem cells .
With the lesser animals, fertilization involving gametes is a natural process, from which an organism results. Cloning of lesser animals alters several steps of the natural process. The product rises from a different starting point: the complement of chromosomes is already complete before being artificially conjoined with the enucleated ovum. The presumption is that, at this point, the “fertilized” ovum is equivalent to an ovum fertilized by the natural process and is now a zygote, the one-celled stage of the new organism. The maturing of the already cloned, lesser animals seems to vindicate this presumption. However, in the attempts at human cloning, the presumption has not yet been validated. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Reprinted from October 2004:
Editor’s Note: In the recent debates of the presidential candidates, President Bush referred to Dred Scott v. Sandford (1856)) supposedly comparing it with Roe v. Wade (1973.) Dred Scott denied slaves the rights of citizenship on the grounds that they were the property of others and not autonomous subjects of rights. The slave was declared to be not a person, in the legal sense of citizenship. By the consequences of this decision, it is not difficult to assume the decision to be equivalent to a denial of the slave’s human personhood. Roe declared the unborn of human parentage to be “not a person in the full sense.” For the slave, the consequence was continued slavery. For the unborn, the consequence is death by abortion.
Roe does not specify the supposed lack of the unborn’s personhood, whether it applies to legal personhood or, more extensively, to biological and philosophical, human personhood. Early on, the abortion-minded assumed the latter, that is, the unborn is not a human being. They did not ask themselves the logical question: Does the Supreme Court have the competence to define “human nature” and “human person” in so serious a matter as handing down a sentence of death? The subject of human life is too fundamental for a court to define. It would have been proper for the Roe court to accept the time-honored assumption that pregnant women are carrying other human beings within their bodies. And it would have been proper for the Dred Scott court to disregard the color of the body and the condition of slavery as incidental to the more fundamental evidence of the slave’s human behavior.
The final resolution of the Dred Scott problem was not a reversal of the Supreme Court’s decision, but rather an action of the federal legislature, passing the Thirteenth Amendment, and of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The resolution of the Roe predicament is problematical. Will it be slowly segmented by legislative action, as in the attempted partial-birth abortion ban, or will it fall completely on its own lack of merit?
Roe is a decision that has been labeled as bad Constitutional Law by many experts. They find no Constitutional basis for the decision. Justice White, who participated in the deliberations, called it “an exercise in raw judicial power.” Some see it as an example of “social engineering. On this web site, we see Roe to be unethically founded, in the Court’s sanctioning of abortion while in doubt concerning the beginning of a human being’s life. We see a fault in its illogical incorporation of Griswold’s “marital privacy” (no state restriction on the sale of contraceptives) into Roe’s “privacy.” (abortion.) We see self-inflicted deception in the Court’s use of “potential human life” in place of an adequate test of what or who is killed in an abortion. We also question the Court’s assessment that the states had criminalized abortion to protect the lives of women, and not to save the lives of their unborn. See Section 9.
It is fair to say that there is a close similarity between Dred Scott and Roe. Both were attempts by a court of law to solve a social problem without the help of Ethics and without the commonsense presumptions of the people. Dred Scott is a shameful page in U.S. history. Let us speedily consign our present shamefulness of Roe to that same record, under the heading of the darker side of human frailty, alongside of the Dred Scott decision. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor’s Note: The Born-Alive Infant Protection Act, enacted by the U.S. Legislature, August of 2002, includes life preservative care for infants born alive in the process of legalized abortion. In virtue of their birth in the United States, these infants are citizens and enjoy all the benefits of U. S. citizenship. Yes, babies, with adequate care, have survived abortions!
Comment: The proponents of Roe v. Wade should have no complaint against this enactment. Roe would be no defense if the abortionist were to kill the already born infant, whether directly or by neglect. Roe sanctions the killing only of the unborn.
Put so simply, the absurdity of legalized abortion begins to show itself. I may attempt to kill but, failing in the endeavor, I must desist in my further effort. Further attempts at killing would no longer be called an abortion. Birth is the arbitrary circumstance of separating homicide from abortion.
It should be noted that Roe does not say to the pregnant woman: “You may kill your unborn child.” Roe says, only, that the mother has Constitutional protection against anyone who would hinder her from aborting her child, even the child’s father. Only as long as her child remains unborn may the mother extend her so-called “right to privacy.”
What, then, could be said about the procedure called partial-birth abortion? Is there here a quibble about the definition of “birth”? Certainly it is not a natural birth. Yet, it may be questioned whether the mother is any longer pregnant. In this instance, the child is dragged from an “unborn” environment into a “partially born” one, by the abortionist. For the proponents of Roe v. Wade it is not a birth. For the abortionist it is enough of a birth to allow a scissors to be plunged into the back of the baby’s neck, for the purpose of killing the victim of the abortion. And the actual killing is not done in an “unborn environment,” but in a “born” one, in the openness of the “procedure room,” shared by the baby, the abortionist and the mother.
If these few words seem to be going nowhere, may I suggest that the subject, by its very nature, that is, unnatural, doesn’t make any sense. Why did the U.S. Supreme Court undertake to turn one segment of the population against another, mothers against their unborn children? There is neither logic nor justice in that! E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Comment on “cloned” embryonic, human stem cells:
As an alternative to the unethical harvesting of stem cells from living human embryos, such as those “left over” from IVF procedures, some experimenters resort to stem cells from “cloned” cellular structures that might or might not be human embryos. (Why human clones are not likely)
Since the experimenters want human embryonic stem cells, do they presume that they have produced human embryos as a result of their cloning process? But this raises the same moral question, about harvesting stem cells from living human embryos. It is curious that one person attempted to distinguish the two cases by saying that the “cloned” embryos are different from the IVF ones because the experimenter does not intend the “cloned” ones to be used for reproduction.
The “cloning” procedure results in what are taken by the experimenter to be embryonic stem cells. If the procedure does not produce human embryos, the designated stem cells would not be identical with their IVF counterparts.
If what results from the cloning process is not a human embryo, even though it’s cells might serve some purpose of the experimenter, the harvesting of its cells would not constitute the killing of an embryonic human being. However, an ethicist might question the ability of the experimenter to discern whether the subject of the experiment is a human embryo or not, restraining the experimenter from possible hurtful action, such as harvesting its cells. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Response reprinted from October 21, 2004: "Embryonic stem-cells NO; Adult stem-cells YES"
Editor’s note: Stem cells may be defined as minimally differentiated cells that, in their proper environment, may divide and produce cells that are further differentiated, according to the needs of the organism. The biology and the ethics of stem cell research can be summarized briefly in these few words:
As to the ethics, stem cells taken from mature human tissues (adult stem cells) and those from other sources, such as the discarded umbilical cord, may be used for purposes of healing, since the willing donor is not harmed by giving the gift. Stem cells may not be taken from embryonic human beings, since such taking kills the embryonic human. This includes all embryonic humans, even those “left over” from IVF procedures.
As for the biology, there are many recorded examples of using adult stem cells for improving the condition of disabled organs and tissues of older human beings. Examples are being multiplied in current research. There are no examples of similar success, in adult tissue, through the use of embryonic stem cells.
It should be noted that stem cells, in multi-celled organisms, are natural instruments of development, repair and replacement, all through lifetime, as well as being the stuff of embryonic development. Cuts and abrasions of the skin are repaired with new cells, stimulated into existence by the presence of the damaged cells. The tissues of the body are continuously being renewed by the replacement of cells, old ones being discarded and new ones taking their place. Some of the new cells arise from simple cell division, the daughter cells being identical to the dividing cell. Others arise from less differentiated cells within the tissues of an organ, stimulated by factors of environment within the involved tissue. These cells, in proportion to the minimal degree of differentiation, could be called stem cells. Red blood cells, in the bone marrow, offer an example. Each one begins its history with a less differentiated cell. Several generations of development take place before the mature cell is released into the circulatory system.
As for embryonic stem cells not being effective in their interaction with mature tissue, a biologist attuned to the conditions prompting cell differentiation could predict this outcome. Aware of the purposiveness of nature, the biologist knows that cells, in multi-celled organisms, respond only to the needs of the entire organism, conveyed to the cell by the contents of their surrounding, liquid environment. They divide and differentiate as directed by a design proper to the species of the organism of which they are part. It should be noted that cancer is an exception: cells running beyond the control of the organism and, therefore, constituting an abnormal and destructive “growth,” the nature of their malignancy.
It is reasonable here to suggest that a scientist must begin his research by questioning whether his objective is possible, then whether it is probable, and then whether it is feasible. It is the first of these questions that is pertinent here: Can embryonic stem cells interact favorably with mature tissue? Experience is showing that there is something like a “generation gap” problem in expecting embryonic cells, outside of their natural environment, to continue acting and reacting as though they were in their embryonic environment. It might be said here that the embryonic stem cell does not know the language of its, now foreign, environment and is unable to respond to it.
What is sometimes overlooked here is that the organism is not a machine. The internal combustion engine of an early automobile ignites properly oxidized fuel. So does the modern engine. A mechanic would not remove the carburetor from the old engine as a replacement for the fuel injector of the modern one. That is because the part has to be conformed to the design of the whole. The cells of organisms do not respond mechanically. They are guided into action and reaction by the principle of life, named by Aristotle, the “psyche” or soul, which maintains the natural integrity of the living thing. The soul works through material instruments within the organism, such as mentioned above, where the individual cell is “triggered” into action by the "programmed" content of its liquid environment.
Bio-engineering has given us many helpful modifications of the human body, noting that the substitutions are always within the range of the possible. Scientists, however, should be willing to admit that everything desirable is not necessarily possible. Time and money and embryonic human lives are being spent, at the urgency of much “hype” and profit-seekers’ demands, but it is questionable whether a fetal environment can be duplicated in mature tissue.
Much of the content of this web site deals, in considerable depth, with the "over-looked" aspects of biological problems currently engaging our scientific community. We invite the viewer to study the material and to use it for the advantage of all, the scientists and the grateful beneficiaries of their dedicated service to our human society. Table of Contents and the listings of Displayed Responses will be of help to the viewer. In summary, embryonic stem cells are not to be tampered with, for reasons of Ethics and good Biology. Research with adult stem cells is to be encouraged. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Response reprinted from August 1, 2003: "What can I do to hasten our return from the culture of death to the culture of life?"
Editor’s Note: In a short interval of time the U.S. has transformed itself from being a nurturing nation, the pioneering years, into a killing nation, the years of Roe. V. Wade.
With government approval we deliberately kill our young, by legalized abortion. No other species in the Animal Kingdom kill their own offspring. We have reduced ourselves to a level below the brute. Yet, with our military, we spread ourselves around the world, “saving” lives for other nations. How long can this schizophrenia continue before we will have reached the “point of no return?”
Reply: Living in the midst of contradictions that are “tolerated” is a form of moral blindness, a refusal to face the truth. Helping one’s neighbors is good. Killing one’s own people is bad. To accept the good, without rejecting the bad, is a breach of integrity, whether on the part of an individual or by a nation.
How long can we live with contradictions without losing touch with reality? Without doubt there is a “point of no return,” at which the distinction between good and evil has been either denied or merely forgotten and at which we disregard our accountability. In the case of blindly accepting abortion as nothing other than a bothersome incident, best forgotten, there are still some “consequences” that tend to preserve the reality. Post-abortion syndrome is one of them. It is deeply embedded in the nature of a woman to remember the one-time resident of her womb, especially one whom she did not welcome there. It is the not-welcoming that stands out most clearly in her memory, because it is something “felt” and not just remembered.
I think it is fair to say that for some individuals and some organizations, the “point of no return” has already been reached and, in some cases, far exceeded. The taste of blood is no longer repulsive to them. They would vehemently repel any attempt to restore personal dignity to human life, except their own, of course. Having been encouraged to choose according to their fancy, the “Do your own thing!” crowd is beyond helping. By their own slogan, they have severed the channels to outside help.
But they are not the whole of our society. There are some of our citizens who are dedicated to justice and good order in our country, who represent our better interests as a people. Your question, then, is whether and, if so, when might this segment of our people stand up and reestablish our claim to our human dignity and a culture of life for our nation? Fortunately they are already at work, like leaven in the dough, cultivating moral health in our youngsters, assisting those who are experiencing distressful pregnancies, and guiding back to health those who had been devastated by having made the wrong choice with respect to their pregnancies. These are the pro-lifers of our nation who, with their counterparts around the world, are encouraging responsible parenthood, with happy children and gracious family living.
Is the 1973 Supreme Court’s decision, Roe v. Wade, responsible for the nation’s degradation? Not totally! If the nation’s moral climate had not already degenerated, that decision could not have been rendered. However, the decision codified and gave the stamp of approval to the degradation already in existence, and to that which has multiplied after, and because of it. The question for each of us now is to ask: “What can I do to hasten our return from the culture of death to the culture of life?" E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor’s Note: The Terri Schiavo case is very complicated, with many significant factors to consider. Where is the starting point for its ethical analysis?
Reply: The most fundamental question here is whether Terri Schiavo is a living human person. If the answer is in the affirmative, she has a human right to necessary nutrients and hydration. And someone has the corresponding obligation to supply them. These are ordinary means of sustaining life, even when a nasal or gastric tube is needed for their delivery. There has been no demonstration to prove that she is not a living human being, whether by biological fact, or philosophical reasoning, or by legally established criteria, such as brain death
The remaining possibility open to investigators would be their condition of doubt concerning whether or not Terri Schiavo is a living human being. A basic principle of Ethics demands that the doubt must be resolved, in this case, in favor of life, rather than of death.
It might be asked logically whether the above statements present a position sufficient to override all the other factors at play in this case. In answer I would say that in light of Ethics, there are no other comparable factors in this case. Nor should the accumulation of those other factors equal or exceed the one mentioned here. Terri Schiavo is not dependant on respiratory or circulatory assistance. Nor is she dying. She needs only nourishment and liquids, as do the rest of us. She needs rehabilitation, as do many of us. And she needs freedom to continue living, her recently expressed intention, without unreasonable restrictions from any member of the human society, of which she a functioning, though limited, part. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor’s Note: Each person’s recourse to suicide or euthanasia is different from that of others because each person’s life history is unique. It is what one brings to the moment of crisis that constitutes the difference. These are the person’s internal resources of objective evaluation and of corresponding action. It must be noted that illness and suffering tend to obscure the clarity of these resources and, therefore, hinder their effectiveness. It would seem that external resources are needed here, a person or persons to care for the emotional, as well as the physical, needs of the patient.
Comment: As with most other things in life, a helping hand solves many problems. However, for a person toying with the thought of suicide, part of the problem is his or her neglect of reaching out for the resources of others. There could be many reasons for that neglect. Pain and other forms of suffering have a way of riveting attention on self rather than on others. With increasing self-concern, ones world grows smaller and ones outside interests lessen, sharpening focus on what remains within the self. Within this limited framework emotions may become disoriented, perception may become unreal and judgment faulty. Along with medical care, some on-going friendship, something personal to live for, is essential to offset the ravages of isolation. The friend must enter that closed world of the patient and gradually lead him or her back into the brighter light of day, even in the face of continuing physical deterioration. The helper’s theme would be: “Life is worth living!”
Besides the generic syndrome of depression, some specific causes of a patient’s negativity toward continuing his or her life could be suggested: hopelessness of regaining health, loneliness, cost of care, the need to be in control (which appears to be lost in favor of caretakers,) lack of meaning to life in the midst of disabilities, mental capability obscured by the emotions, and so forth.
Hospice care would be a model for the final stage of the patient’s life but, prior to that, there is often need to assist a patient in seeing value in his or her life, however debilitated the body may be. The things of the spirit could be seen as of even greater value than those of the body, and that they can be strengthened even during the decline of physical health. In this area of life, the patient does have control. It is here, too, that outside help is available, since many of the values are religious in nature and relate the patient with God, beyond whom there is no greater source of strength and comfort.
Suicide is not natural behavior. Life, by its nature, pushes on, despite obstacles on the road ahead. When the zest for life diminishes the patient must mount a courageous effort to strengthen his or her inner resources by their practice. Because help will be needed in that effort let the rest of us, in our common human nature, be ready to lend a hand! To begin with, let us strongly oppose any and all efforts toward the legalization of assisted-suicide and euthanasia. Life is, indeed, worth living! E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor’s Note: Early in the abortion experience, thinking persons predicted that legalized euthanasia could become a consequence of legalized abortion. Now, their predictions are being amply fulfilled.
Comment: My purpose here is not to present the history that validates your statement. Others are already doing that. Rather, I would like to travel with our viewers down the road of ethical analysis to discern the driving force behind this phenomenon called euthanasia, especially its connection with the legalization of abortion.
Euthanasia is a Greek word meaning, literally, “a good death.” The significance of the term is clearly seen in its English version, “mercy-killing.” In substance, then, euthanasia is the deliberate killing of a person to terminate his or her suffering. It is generally implied that the action is undertaken at the request of the patient. (The word “patient” is taken from the Latin deponent verb, patior, to suffer.) Ethically, this understanding of euthanasia would identify the patient’s role with suicide, with the added feature that the actual killing is done by someone other than the patient. Both participants would share in the moral responsibility of the action. In another version, sometimes referred to as “assisted suicide,” the other person supplies the means whereby the patient kills himself. It must be noted here that no one is ethically free, either to kill himself or to ask to be killed by another or to participate in the killing. Without the patient’s consent, euthanasia is called murder. From these considerations it should follow that no state or nation is ethically free to legalize euthanasia, assisted-suicide or suicide.
It is helpful here to distinguish euthanasia, as defined above, from “letting the patient die,” an expression indicating that no extraordinary means are employed to prolong the dying process. There are not only ethical but also, more recently, legal definitions of “extraordinary.” Ethics, for example, states that nutrition and hydration are not extraordinary means of sustaining life, even when nasal or gastric intubations might be required. They are not treatment. In this age of technology they are ordinary care. The same can be said for intravenous feeding.
A special type of problem arises in the use of medication for relief of pain. If the dosage of the medication must be increased in order to be effective, and if the increased dosage becomes life threatening, the doctor must carefully weigh the total benefits against the total hurtful consequences of his decision, before prescribing the increase of dosage. The Ethics rule here is called “the principle of the double-effect.”
On a different level of thinking, does the legalizing of euthanasia put pressure on the sick and the elderly, so as to weaken their resolve to continue living? With the high cost of medical care and the scarcity of professional care-takers, and the feeling of being “a burden” upon their family, some patients might well be tempted to feel an obligation to take advantage of what the law has offered. The remedy of this not so hidden problem is for families to welcome the opportunity to care for the sick and the elderly and to encourage their continued presence among us. Hospice type care, even at home, would be a source of strength and humane comfort for the terminal patient. This would be a refreshing change from the ego-centering process of our modern culture.
As for the present status of euthanasia in relationship with legalized abortion, it would help our understanding to remember that the push for legalized euthanasia came only after abortion had been “comfortably and securely” entrenched in our society. And euthanasia is following the same pattern that promoted abortion: Sell it with the hard cases and then it will universalize itself as a great good. Take as an example the winners at the recent Oscars, promoters of euthanasia. Further, the motivation and the attempts at justification for legalized abortion and euthanasia are similar. Both can become beneficial to the practitioner, rather than to the victim of the “procedures.”
In the midst of all the necessary considerations pertinent to care of the sick and the dying, laws are essential, both Natural Law and civil law. Laws must promote justice, in this case, protection for the exercise of ones right to life and dignity, in whatever condition ones life might be. With the help of family members and friends, the final days would not be wasted, as in euthanasia, but seized upon to settle accounts with God and neighbor, promoting a sense of peace and accomplishment in the heart and mind of the patient. The beginning of ones life and its ending are occasions of greatest vulnerability. Civil law should not be used to pounce upon the vulnerable. Law should stand strong in defense of the weak. Law expresses the mind of the people, but it must also express the heart, by which we know that we are our brother’s keeper. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor’s Note: The U.S. Supreme Court chose not to hear the McCorvey v. Hill appeal. Do you foresee that the content of McCorvey’s case will resurface in some other contest with Roe?
Reply: The Supreme Court was asked to judge whether the Circuit Court had been fair in its decision against McCorvey v. Hill, a case that had failed on a technicality. The Court did not review the content of the case. The same material could be presented again in some other case and, I would think, effectively. One of the justices of the Circuit Court, Edith Jones, recommended that the material should be used for that very purpose.
McCorvey v. Hill speaks of two issues: The first issue is that the Roe court, in professing its ignorance concerning the beginning of a human individual’s life, offered no proof that the unborn victim of abortion is not a human being. This, in itself, is a serious infraction against a principle of Ethics. The Supreme Court sanctioned the deaths of what it knew might be human beings. And the Court has not taken advantage of more recent, scientific knowledge concerning the humanity of the unborn. This would be a good example of malpractice. The second issue: There is extensive hurt to women who are being misled by the easy availability of legalized abortion. It is called “Post-abortion Syndrome.” This was not anticipated in the Court’s 1973 decision. Both issues can be used against Roe, whose continuance is a cause of injustice to the unborn and to their mothers.
Perhaps I was overly enthusiastic in presuming that the Supreme Court is looking for an occasion to examine Roe v. Wade. The social disorder that Roe has caused should have been a sufficient reason for the Court to be uneasy at the brokenness of Roe and its progeny. Does the Court fail to see that there are problems, and that there have been problems from the very beginning of Roe? Perhaps the Court has eyes only for the mechanical structure of the case, and is less perceptive of its content?
This is another tangled fiber in the fabric of the Supreme Court, its freedom to reject what it does not wish to face. Yet, the Court is positioned as the final resort for those seeking a fair solution to their problems. Should not some other body, outside the Court and from among the people, for example, the federal legislature, have authority to choose cases of concern to all the people of the nation, such as legalized abortion, that the Court may not refuse to adjudicate? Then, the content of a case would take its rightful place among the choices of the Court, and the people of the nation would be served, rather than ignored, by a Supreme Court seemingly interested in its own agenda. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor’s note: At the time of this writing, Feb. 21, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court is currently deliberating whether to hear the appeal of McCorvey v. Hill. It would be of interest to consider possible claims, other than those of this case that would warrant the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Comment: The plaintiff in this appeal of McCorvey v. Hill offers the Supreme Court two claims of injustice being perpetrated by Roe. First, the Roe court did not have adequate knowledge of the humanity of the unborn child, and acted on an erroneous assumption when they sanctioned the child’s killing. Scientific knowledge of today places the beginning of a human individual’s life at conception (fertilization.) Along with the first-hand evidence of the sonogram, abortion can be seen through the eyes of the biological sciences, reinforced by Philosophy, as the killing of a human being. Second, the Court was not aware of the extensive hurting that abortion causes in great numbers of women. Today, the Court will have more than a thousand affidavits to witness that hurt. Because of this difference of knowledge of facts, now and then, the 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade, is unjust and should be overturned.
Yes, there are other claims that could be added, perhaps through another case, should that be needed. In first place should be listed Roe’s consequential denial of the human right of a father to defend the life of his child.
Apart from the prime injustice of defending the mother’s killing of her unborn child, Roe has deprived society of the lives and talents and earning power of approximately one-third of what would have been the U.S. population increase since 1973. This is an injustice to the nation.
On a different level, perhaps higher than the law, the Roe decision should be faulted for its disregard of a fundamental principle of Ethics. The Court professed their ignorance of the beginning of a human individual’s life, yet sanctioned the killing of the unborn. They acted hurtfully, in doubt of fact, whereas they should have refrained from acting until doubt would be replaced with certitude. They failed in their responsibility to truth as well as to justice.
On this eve of the Court’s announcement, I am inclined to believe that the Supreme Court will gladly agree to hear McCorvey v. Hill and will find within it ample reason to overrule Roe v. Wade and its unwholesome progeny, such as Casey and Nebraska. That action would restore the nation’s confidence in its justice system. Now there would be, indeed, “liberty and justice for all.” And it would vindicate the plaintiff in this case, Ms. Norma McCorvey, also the plaintiff in 1973, in her conscientious desire to correct the injustices perpetrated in her name, through Roe v. Wade and its progeny. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Question: How do you respond to those who contend that the unborn child is a parasite and that by acknowledging its right to life you are giving him more rights than the mother; as no “born” person has the right to live off another’s body. When you have shot down all their arguments this is what it boils down to for them.
Reply: The position you describe was, in the early days of the abortion struggle, a popular refuge for those seeking a justification for following Roe v. Wade. I have not heard it mentioned in recent years. There was a time when the position was supposedly reinforced by claiming the unborn child to be “an unjust aggressor,” giving the mother a claim to self-defense.
Those holding this position should be asked for their definition of “Parasite.” They should be reminded that the term refers to a condition of symbiosis, where there are two organisms, the life of at least one of them being dependant on the other. Some symbiotic relationships are mutually advantageous, as in the case of the lichens, a community of algae and fungi. In others, one of the organisms may live to the detriment of the other. Mistletoe, and the tree to which it fastens itself, would be an example of the latter: a certain amount of mistletoe will kill the tree. Is this what is implied in the position you have mentioned – the child is like the mistletoe and the mother is like the tree?
It would be helpful at this point of the discussion to deny the claim that “the child is living off the mother.” After conception, the mother merely supplies nutrients, liquids and oxygen, all of which come from outside of herself. She supplies warmth for her child, and carries away her child’s waste. And, yes, add at least a minimum of mother's love. The body of the mother is not being consumed by the child. The child is not “living off” the mother. This is simple Embryology.
Or is the position you mentioned using “parasite” only by way of analogy – that there are some maternal sacrifices involved in child-bearing?” No one should deny that there are sacrifices of one’s ordinary lifestyle because of motherhood. That’s why parenthood is a prime example of love for neighbor. And it is why the annual day of national gratitude, called Mother’s Day, is celebrated.
So, the position is without merit. It is difficult to see how anything as natural as human reproduction could be antagonistic within itself, as though the child were in competition with the mother. In the natural course of events, as evidenced in the majority, motherhood is beneficial to a woman, both physically and emotionally.
It would be especially difficult to see, in cases where pregnancy had been willingly entered into, that a woman could look upon her unborn baby as a parasite. Even under the circumstances of rape and incest, the child is not an intruder; The child’s father is the intruder, and he, not the child, should be held accountable.
Your question points up the complex area of interpersonal relationships. The “cliché” or “sound bite” needs careful study before it can be accepted as a solution to social problems. The problem of your concern indicates the need for establishing biological facts, and for applying ethical and social principles, as we have suggested here, to lay to rest the ragged excuse of the unborn child as an aggressor. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Comment: A bill is being prepared in the U.S. legislature requiring abortionists to inform the mother about her child’s sensitivity to pain, beginning with twenty weeks from conception. She may then request anesthesia for her child, prior to the killing. The macabre scene of killing a child is now enhanced in obscenity by the tender schizophrenic thoughtfulness of making the atrocity less painful. The government, having launched the killing, now thirty-two years later, will impose a sop of sympathy for its victims yet to come.
Reply: Least I appear to agree, too readily, with your diagnosis of schizophrenia, I hasten to say that the U.S. government has three branches, the executive, judicial and legislative. Your observation concerns itself with a conflict between the Supreme Court and the federal legislature. Because of their representative form of government, U.S. citizens speak through their legislature. In the case of legalized abortion, the conflict is between the Court and the people.
For a country willing to spend its resources of military and money to defend against unjust aggression in distant parts of the world, it is bizarre to see that same nation sanctioning the killing of its own most defenseless, its unborn. Yes, that’s schizophrenic!
Does the problem have a solution? When the unacceptable is imposed upon the people by a court, responses may arise that appear strange in light of the absurdity that provoked those reactions. This current demand for a painkiller in the face of pain is no mere gesture of defiance toward the pain. It is a gentle plea against those who cause the pain. Yet, it shouts out to the nation: “You want to spare the unborn from pain because he or she is one of us. Why, then, do you kill the one you strive to shield from pain?”
It is interesting to note that the leader of one of the abortion organizations recently stated her guarded approval of the proposed pain-killing legislation. At the same time, she demanded that there be no corresponding restrictions on “choice.” After the recent national election, with its emphasis on human values, it is quite likely that more proponents of “choice” will attempt to color their primary interest with imitations of compassion for their victims. “Caveat emptor.”
After this introduction to my commentary, you might assume that I would oppose the enactment of the anesthesia proposal. To the contrary, I applaud that effort. What I oppose is that which forces the people to grovel at the whim of a court in order to display a human dimension in the face of a gigantic barbarity. The atrocious absurdity of parents killing their own offspring must be brought to the attention of the Court. Those who unwillingly share in the unsavory consequences of that atrocity, the people of the nation, are responding to that need.
And, so, the people are “raising the stakes” in this game of Life & Death. “The ball” of decency is now “in the court” of the Judiciary. Let the play continue, and speed it toward its end! E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor’s Note: According to on-going polls in the United States, a lessening number of women are favoring legalized abortion and an increasing number of women are opposing it. Also, in recent years, the number of women having experienced abortion and are now publicly descrying it, is growing rapidly. Does this indicate that Roe v. Wade is in danger of collapse?
Reply: These numbers are not only indicators of change; they are instruments of change. When a sizable majority of a free nation is either “for” something or “against” something, the something is likely to be established or removed. The reason behind the numbers, of course, is what is significant here. With reference to legalized abortion, the nation is beginning to see beyond the rhetoric of “Choice!” and to face up to the reality of abortion. Women who have experienced abortion in their own lives are now speaking out, and the nation is listening. In fact, earlier this week, a plea was filed with the Supreme Court by the original plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, Norma McCorvey, to over-rule the 1973 decision because of the vast injury to women who were, and are, mislead by that decision.
In a rather blunt expression it is said: “You can take a child out of a woman but you can never take the woman out of the child.” The fulfillment of this statement is called Post-Abortion Syndrome.
To explain the changing attitudes towards legalized abortion, it must be noted that the culture of the nation has changed during the interval of 1973 and the present time. When Roe was fabricated by the Supreme Court, the newly affluent culture was eager to embrace “The Brave New World.” Although the Court’s decision surprised and shocked many of the people, it was accepted, routinely, by many also. Now, after thirty-two years of experience with legalized abortion and its hurtful consequences, in an environment of uncertainty and anxiety about the direction of our culture, the people have set aside their reckless dreaming and have begun to face objective reality.
In order to tolerate Roe, people believed in its deceptively phrased, non-personhood of the unborn victim. Scientific scrutiny has dispelled the foundation of that belief as incorrect, so that now the people, awakening to their own humanity, have rallied to the cause of their brothers and sisters waiting to be born. In the “Women’s Liberation Movement” of the Sixties and early Seventies, legalized abortion was seen as a necessary step in the fight for gender-equality. Today, it is seen as a deception and an obstacle to genuine feminine liberation.
The “Now Generation” will not have learned this lesson of recent history. For them, there is no history. There is only “The Now.” Preoccupation with the external senses has riveted them to a perpetual present-moment, through the endless chain of objects immediately present to them. A sufficient number of the people, however, are exiting the Now Generation’s culture of death and moving into a future culture dedicated to life. And women are in the forefront of that moral and social revolution. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor’s Note: Because of interest in the possible reversal of Roe v. Wade we look into the “mechanics” of reversal.
Comment: The Dred Scott decision, handed down in the nineteenth Century by the Supreme Court and bearing on the slavery question in the United States, was not formally over-turned by the Supreme Court. It was, rather, rendered ineffective by legislation and by the President’s Proclamation of Emancipation. More recently a clearer demonstration of canceling a Supreme Court decision is found in the Court’s 2003 decision Lawrence v. Texas that over-ruled their 1986 decision that had favored Georgia’s prohibition against certain forms of sexual behavior. Roe could be over-ruled in like fashion, by the Court itself.
In matters of human behavior individual justices of the Supreme Court are inclined to interpret the Constitution in one or the other of two ways. They first see the Constitution as understood by the writers of that document with reference to the history and culture of their day. These are known as strict constructionists. The second see the Constitution as applicable to the culture of the present day. These see the Constitution as “living and evolving” through the on-going decisions of the Supreme Court. These justices are sometimes called judicial activists.
It is important to note here that culture is not merely “how people live” in any era of human history. If it were so, culture would be a bad norm of government. When most of the people become bank robbers, then bank robbing would become legal. It must be kept in mind that human activity is governed by ethical norms, promulgated by human reason and a sense of responsibility. These do not change. They are the bed-rock of the writers’ design of the U.S. Constitution. It is possible that even a Supreme Court justice could become confused and mistaken in his judgment if he were unmindful of objective norms of proper behavior with respect to self and neighbor. Judgment must be founded on inalienable, natural rights, not on those that are the supposed products of an evolutionary process of human invention.
The Roe court devised a “right” for a woman wishing to dispose of her unborn child, based upon an “evolved” standard of value, one which places the mother’s wishes above the inalienable right of her child to continue living. One of the steps in this process of evolution is Griswold, the right of access to contraceptive materials, under the title of marital privacy, which further evolved into the “right to privacy” of Roe.
Traditional legislation pertinent to abortion, prior to Roe, saw no “fundamental” right to abortion. The right to life, on the other hand, was seen as a “fundamental” right. When the Roe court failed to resolve the question of the unborn’s humanity, and proceeded to assume a negative position on the question, the “fundamental” right gave way to its inferior, that the mother may dispose of her child. The Court’s stance was revealed in a following case, Webster, by appealing to the 14th Amendment’s due process clause, granted by the Court to the mother but not to her child.
At the demise of Roe, currently existing state laws would prevail in those states until modified by the state. Other states would be free to enact legislation, regulating or prohibiting abortion. Again, although there are external differences of culture in the various states, the basic concept of objective, ethical norms should be the root system of any legislation proposing to guarantee justice and liberty for all. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Editor’s Note: With the New Year, 2005, beginning to take shape we are challenged to think how life in the U.S. might be affected by the demise of Roe v. Wade.
Comment: My first reaction to your challenge is to see a rapid decline in abortion numbers, regardless of whatever state or federal legislation might follow Roe. The death of Roe would vindicate many citizens, especially women having experienced abortion, in their hard-earned conclusion that abortion is not good for our society. This reaction would be reinforced by the commonsense notion that law is a nation’s way of teaching and, in this instance, that Roe v. Wade was a mistake. The rapid growth in the practice of abortion immediately after 1973 indicates that legal sanction promotes abortion. It is logical to assume that the removal of that sanction would promote a decrease in the practice.
As for legal regulation consequent to the collapse of Roe, it cannot realistically be seen that anything as permissive as Roe could be forthcoming. In the recent national election the people of the nation have spoken on behalf of moral values, and this is a nation governed by its people. They see no justification for legalized abortion and they have become sensitive to the hurtful consequence of its practice. Because of the decreased number of abortions, the U.S. would begin to regain its place of leadership in the community of nations as people able to maintain themselves, socially and economically. Also, just as the bad moral example of the past, under Roe, had misled other nations, so now good example could encourage their reform.
Just as Watergate had awakened an undisciplined society and initiated political reform, so the departure of Roe could prompt a cultural rebirth, centered on respect for the rights of every human individual, especially of those waiting to be born.
In this day of crass interference with the workings of nature, nothing is more needed than respect for nature itself. There could be a return to acceptance of nature’s purpose and a willing conformity to its design. The unborn human would no longer be a guinea pig for the experimenters nor a market of body parts for the supposed benefit of others.
It is pleasing to assume that the greatest reward of a post-Roe world could be an enlightened appreciation of parenthood and of its fruitfulness, the children, our present joy and the future of our society.
It should go without saying that Roe’s absence would leave room for nature’s Author to speak and be heard. And it would leave an appreciative nation free to listen and to accept the truth. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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