UNDERSTANDING ROE vs. WADE

INTRODUCTION

WHAT WAS ROE vs. WADE?

Roe vs. Wade was a now infamous court case that ultimately ended up in the Supreme Court of the United States wherein the court struck down all state laws banning abortion for any reason; i.e., abortion on demand became the law of the land.

Here’s a few things most people don’t realize:

There was abortion before Rowe v. Wade. There were seven states where abortion was illegal and seven states where abortion was legal for any reason what-so-ever. The remaining states had limiting laws from 6 -13 weeks wherein abortion was legal.

Rowe v. Wade struck down all state laws and made abortion available on demand without restriction. These laws were, and are, complicated to monitor and enforce. As we have seen recently, progressives have taken to selective enforcement base upon agenda.

The Jane Roe in Roe vs. Wade was Norma Covey, a women who became a believer and pro life supporter later in life. Pastor Keith knew her personally.

The Wade in Rowe v. Wade was Henry Wade, the District Attorney of Dallas County, Texas.

He was unfortunately, woefully unprepared for the case. His argument was that unborn children were a potential life, and that being the building block of society, the State has a vested interest in protecting potential life.

There was no very little scientific evidence, such as sonograms, etc., available at that, and what was available was not presented. The presumption of the DA was that these were babies was not in question. Ultimately, the ruling was made not based on the humanity of the baby, but rather, as abortion could be considered a medical procedure, women had privacy rights under the constitution.

A lifelong Republican and devout Methodist, justice, Harry Blackmun, wrote the majority opinion in the case, which basically stated that state laws that unduly restricted abortion were unconstitutional—not specifically because a woman had a right to choose to have an abortion, but because of a the right to privacy under the 14th amendment, know as primarily for providing “Equal Protection Under the Law.”

The 14th Amendment was written ostensibly in response to the Dread Scott decision of the Supreme court, which ironically, denied the personhood of African Americans and their right to citizenship and equal protection under the law.

From the nation’s founding, African Americans regarded themselves as citizens. When the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1788, it did not restrict citizenship based on race. However, enslaved people were only counted as 3/5ths of a person, rather than as full citizens most state populations.

Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott

Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet Robinson Scott, filed suits to claim their freedom while still enslaved, based on having lived in free territory. Dred Scott appealed his case to the United States Supreme Court, which denied his claim on the basis that he was not a citizen and had no right to sue in federal court. Delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford, 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote: "[slaves and their descendants] had for more than a century been regarded as beings of an inferior order … they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

The arguments for abortion on demand for any reason are disturbingly similar to the arguments against the 13th Amendment ending slavery in America.

Slave owners claimed that ending slavery would economically impact and otherwise disrupt the lives of plantation owners.

Abolitionists were people who believed that slavery was immoral and who wanted slavery in the United States to come to an end. They had influenced political debates in the United States from the late 17th century through the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854.  This law, which organized these two territories for settlement, proposed that the residents would vote on whether or not to allow slavery when the territory became a state.  This approach was called popular sovereignty.

The following is from the website battlefields.org.

On May 21, 1856 hundreds of border ruffians once again crossed the border between Missouri and Kansas and entered Lawrence to wreak havoc—setting fire to buildings and destroying the printing press of an abolitionist newspaper. Although no one was killed, the Republican press labeled this event as the “Sack of Lawrence,” which officially ignited a guerrilla war between pro-slavery settlers aided by border ruffians and anti-slavery settlers. It is important to note that sporadic violence existed in the territory since 1855. This period of guerrilla warfare is referred to as Bleeding Kansas because of the blood shed by pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups, lasting until the violence died down in roughly 1859. Most of the violence was relatively unorganized, small scale violence, yet it led to mass feelings of terror within the territory. The most horrific incident occurred in late May 1856 when one night abolitionist fanatic John Brown and his sons forced five southerners from their homes along the Pottawatomie Creek and murdered them in cold blood. While their victims were southerners they did not own any slaves but still supported slavery’s extension into Kansas. Republicans used Bleeding Kansas as a powerful rhetorical weapon in the 1856 Election to garner support among northerners by arguing that the Democrats clearly sided with the pro-slavery forces perpetrating this violence. In reality, both sides engaged in acts of violence—neither party was innocent

See any similarities to current conditions in the United States?

In referencing the 14th amendment, Justice Blackmun based his decision on the fact that the state had no power to override the autonomy of a citizen with undue restrictions, and while the constitution makes no mention of a right to privacy, in writing the opinion for the majority, followed in the footsteps of the contraceptive case Griswold v. Connecticut from 1965, in which leftist Supreme Court Justice William Douglas invented privacy rights, which he had discovered in “penumbras, formed by emanations from” the Bill of Rights.

Justice Douglas stated:

“There is a “penumbra” (the outer edge of a shadow cast by an opaque object) of presumptive privacy in the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.”

What was totally ignored in this decision was the humanity of the unborn child. Which brings us to the science of Roe Vs. Wade.

What is the Science?

In Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, Justice Harry Blackmun came to the conclusion that there was no scientific consensus as to when life begins. Blackmun wrote in Roe vs. Wade:

“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.”

Based on this claim, Blackmun refused to recognize the preborn as human beings and legalized abortion.

In his opinion, Blackmun cited the following scientists and philosophers: Hippocrates (460 – 370 BC) Aristotle, (384 – 322 BC), Soranus of Ephesus (98 – 138 A.D.), Galen (129 – 280 A.D.), St. Augustine (354 – 430 A.D.) and St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274 A.D.)

He did not cite a single medical source more current than the 1200s.

Hilgers writes, “Blackmun relies, in large part, on these early (ancient) physicians and philosophers to help dehumanize the early human embryo and take value away from it.”9

Blackmun essentially ignored 600 years of scientific advancements in order to conclude that a preborn baby isn’t a person.

Interestingly enough, in quoting Hippocrates, the author of the Hippocratic Oath, taken by all practicing physicians, the following line appeared until around 1964 that read as follows:

“I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgment, and I will do no harm or injustice to them.[6] Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.”

By 1973, it was known to science that life begins at conception. Embryology textbooks had been teaching this for decades. For example, “The Development of the Human Body: A Manual of Human Embryology,” published in 1923, said:

[A]s a matter of fact, such a restoration [of cells] occurs at the very beginning of the development of each individual, being brought about by the union of a spermatozoa with an ovum.3

The medical textbook “Human Embryology: Prenatal Development of Form and Function” of 1945, said:

There are no essential differences between prenatal and postnatal development; the former is more rapid and results in more striking changes in shape and proportions, but in both the basic mechanisms are very similar if not identical.”4

“The Essentials of Human Embryology, “from 1946, stated, “This fertilized egg is the beginning of a new individual.”6

“Developmental Anatomy: A Textbook and Laboratory Manual of Embryology,” from 1965, said, “The union of the male and female sex cells definitely marks the beginning of a new individual.”7

And renowned embryologist LB Shettles in the prestigious “Journal of the American Medical Association,” wrote in 1970, “By…definition a new composite individual is started at the moment of fertilization.”8

In his book The Fake and Deceptive Science, Dr. Thomas W Hilgers, MD, stated the following:

“In fact, Blackmun’s grasp of human biology was so poor that there’s actually a scientific error in the text of Roe v. Wade itself. He refers to “the normal 266-day human gestation period.”

This is incorrect. Gestation period is a medical term. The gestation period refers to the time between the first day of the woman’s last menstrual period and the birth of the baby. Blackmun made the error of misunderstanding gestation period as the time between conception – at ovulation, two weeks after the woman’s period begins– and birth. Measured correctly, the gestation period lasts 280 days– not 266. Blackmun made an error — a factual mistake about human biology and scientific terminology.”

As Hilgers points out, “Such a basic error, while not of enormous significance in the grand scheme of things, does reveal the lack of scientific expertise on display in these [Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs. Bolton] decisions.”

A pregnant woman has never given birth to anything but a human being. At the moment of conception, a living organism has a full 46 chromosomes; their gender, blood type, eye color, hair color, etc., is fully determined. All they need is nutrition and a protected place to live to complete their full development.

Remember the above medical journal; “There are no essential differences between prenatal and postnatal development; the former is more rapid and results in more striking changes in shape and proportions, but in both the basic mechanisms are very similar if not identical.”

At 5 weeks of pregnancy, the child in the womb has a heartbeat, many women don’t even know they’re pregnant, but their child’s heart is beating. From six to seven weeks, the child has developing ears, eyes, and a nose. From six to seven weeks the child doubles in size.

Doctors at the hospital recently performed heart surgery on a 21-week unborn baby while he was still in his mother’s womb, and removed a tumor that almost killed him, CBS 3 in Philadelphia reports.

“His heart at the time of surgery was the size of a peanut. The size of the tumor was three-times the size of the heart,” surgeon Dr. Jack Rychik told the news station. “Had we waited an additional day, we probably would have been too late.”

Rychik and his team performed the fetal heart surgery in October, and baby Juan was born on Dec. 11. Earlier this month, doctors declared him well enough to go home, according to the report.

Parents Cecilia Cella and Pablo Paladino traveled all the way from Uruguay in South America to give their unborn son a chance at life.

The family quickly traveled to Philadelphia where a medical team performed surgery on Juan and his mother when she was 21 weeks pregnant. The surgery went well, but when Juan was born, doctors discovered that the tumor had regrown; and they performed a second surgery to remove it, according to the report.

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“It was a hard time, crazy time, but we are extremely happy how everything was solved,” Paladino told CBS before the family headed home.

According to the hospital, Juan is the second baby to survive the life-saving fetal heart surgery. The first, Tucker Roussin, is 4 years old now.

LEGAL FACTS OF ROE VS. WADE?

The life of the mother in regard to abortion, has never been a constitutional issue. That is referred to as a Therapeutic Abortion. This has never been illegal. It is often quoted in defense of Roe, but it has no bearing whatsoever on the case.

The state does in fact have a vested interest in protecting the life of children; for example, education law, car seats, second-hand smoke, endangering a minor, etc.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not a know for being a rabid conservative, on Roe: “Nine un-elected judges decide this question for the nation. It should be decided by the people’s elected representatives, by the members of the state legislatures.”

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?

Genesis 1:27 NLT

27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Job 33:4 NLT

4 For the Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

Psalm 139:13–16 NLT

13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. 15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. 16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.

Job 10:11–12 NLT

11 You clothed me with skin and flesh, and you knit my bones and sinews together. 12 You gave me life and showed me your unfailing love. My life was preserved by your care.

Isaiah 44:24 NLT

24 This is what the Lord says— your Redeemer and Creator: “I am the Lord, who made all things. I alone stretched out the heavens. Who was with me when I made the earth?

Jeremiah 1:5 NLT

5 “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.”

Psalm 127:3 NLT

3 Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him.

Psalm 139:13–16 NLT

13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. 15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. 16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.

Luke 1:41–44 NLT

41 At the sound of Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth’s child leaped within her, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 Elizabeth gave a glad cry and exclaimed to Mary, “God has blessed you above all women, and your child is blessed. 43 Why am I so honored, that the mother of my Lord should visit me? 44 When I heard your greeting, the baby in my womb jumped for joy.

I am pro life because God is pro life.

Before I knew God, I was pro life because the science supported my decision.

Encouraging times; break curses, pronounce blessings.