Marching for Life

Statement

Forty-three years ago, seven unelected lawyers struck down the abortion statutes of 48 states. Those laws were put in place by elected representatives who were accountable to the people, and responsible for carrying out their will.

The Supreme Court majority, ruling in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, admitted that the Constitution said nothing about abortion; rather, they claimed that "penumbras" of the Bill of Rights protected general rights to privacy.

But, obviously, there is nothing private about abortion. Abortions do not take place in bedrooms, but in clinics and hospitals. And, more to the point, reasons of privacy could never reasonably justify the taking of an innocent human life.

Under Roe, children can be killed at any time before they are "viable," that is, before they can "live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid." As science and technology has improved, younger and younger children have been able to live outside of the womb. Resting a life or death decision on such a vague, contingent, and mutable principle as viability is not just immoral, but logically absurd.

It is clear that Roe and Doe are both textbook examples of bad jurisprudence. But even worse have been their consequences: 57 million children dead who would otherwise be our neighbors, children who never got the chance to go to school, to grow up, to get a job, to fall in love, or to start a family. Because of two decisions by seven lawyers on that infamous day, an American population nearly the size of Italy was snuffed out with government approval.

State-sanctioned killing of the innocent undermines our entire way of life, because it strikes at the root of our human rights. If rights are only afforded to some and not to all, what is to stop the powerful from oppressing minorities? If rights come and go depending upon our physical condition, how can the ill or the aged expect that society will take care of them? The Roe regime enables the strong to violate the human rights of the weak.

Not only does abortion take a life, but it does so in a particularly cruel fashion--death by dismemberment. That is why so many abortion supporters avoid talking about abortion, and use euphemisms like "choice," or "health" or "reproductive rights." The details of what an abortion actually is are gruesome.

It is no surprise, then, that both of the plaintiffs in the above cases, Norma McCorvey (Roe) and Sandra Cano (Doe), became ardent pro-life activists in the years following these catastrophic decisions.

Today, hundreds of thousands brave the freezing cold to march in Washington. The pro-life movement is strong and getting stronger. Poll after poll shows that even those who identify as "pro-choice" support substantial restrictions on abortion and largely consider abortion immoral. Three-quarters of the country opposes abortion on demand and late-term abortion, both of which resulted from Roe and Doe. A similar percentage supports regulating abortion clinics with at least the same rigor with which we regulate health care facilities. It is no mere happenstance that abortion supporters always invoke the rarest and most extreme circumstances--rape or incest, for example--to justify abortion in the abstract. These cases constitute less than 2% of abortions. There is a consensus even among pro-choice and politically liberal Americans that the other 98% of abortions are wrong and ought to be legally restricted.

Our laws are wildly out of touch with the American people's views. The federal government pays over one million dollars a day to organizations that perform abortions. Paying for their administrative and other costs frees up resources to perform even more abortions.

The pro-life movement can be hopeful, because today's young people tend to be more pro-life than their parents' generation. This has helped reduce the abortion rate today to its lowest point since 1973. Having been born after Roe, they know that they might easily have been legally killed. With a strong commitment to social justice and compassion for the oppressed and the marginalized, they recognize that abortion is an act of violence against the unwanted.

Forty-three years is a long time, but hundreds of thousands of Americans will continue to march until we create a culture that affirms the value of every single human being--whether they are healthy or sick, rich or poor, born or unborn.

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