Roe v. Wade v. Congress v. God
I
By William Bowmer
n the annals of court decisions, it is unlikely that the phrase Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will ever carry the emotional punch of Roe v. Wade. Yet when in May of this year the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) was rocked by the unauthorized leak of a preliminary draft decision of that case—a case that could potentially curtail the availability of abortion across the U.S.—many observed that the leak might be as significant as the decision itself. Before SCOTUS issued its landmark ruling on Roe v. Wade in January 1973, abortion was illegal in 30 of the 50 U.S. states. It was legal upon request in just four—Alaska, Hawaii, New York, and Washington. In other states, abortion was allowed if a pregnancy jeopardized a woman’s life—with a definition of “jeopardy” often so broad and subjective that an affluent abortion-seeker could usually find a willing doctor. Roe v. Wade decriminalized abortion in all 50 states. Yet, almost as soon as SCOTUS issued its ruling, observers began to wonder whether the decision would stand the test of time. Justice Harry Blackmun, writing the majority opinion, admitted as much when he wrote, “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer” (U.S. Reports: Roe v. Wade,
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Tomorrow’s World
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July 2022
p. 113). Blackmun acknowledged that his opinion was time-bound—reached in part because of a lack of scientific consensus as to when a human life begins. So, it is no surprise that, nearly 50 years later— after five decades of medical advancements that have given us far greater understanding of life in the womb—Roe v. Wade is facing increased scrutiny. On one hand, advances in surgical technique have made abortion far safer than ever before—for the mother. Yet we should put this in perspective; key abortion-rights advocates in the years before Roe v. Wade have long since admitted that their figures regarding supposed “back-alley” abortions were largely fictitious. Former abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson, in his autobiography The Hand of God, writes, “There were perhaps three hundred or so deaths from criminal abortions annually in the United States in the sixties, but NARAL [the National Abortion Rights Action League] in its press releases claimed to have data that supported a figure of five thousand” (pp. 89–90). These long-discredited lies still inflame many who fear the return of less permissive abortion laws. Congress, SCOTUS, and Partisanship But even if Roe v. Wade cannot survive the scrutiny of modern medical science, why have abortion supporters been unable to muster the political support to legislate legal abortion on some other premise? Consider that the U.S. Congress has not passed legislation that would legalize abortion and remove the issue from the purview of the courts. Why? Is it that,
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