To
celebrate this year’s March For Life 2015, I
will present this Pro-Life Article from Live Action, a Pro-Life Organization that I
endorsed:
INTERNET
SOURCE: http://liveactionnews.org/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-roe-v-wade/
5 things you didn’t know
about Roe v Wade
8:32 am, Jan 16, 2015
As
one of the most famous cases in United States history, Roe v Wade is perhaps one
of the least understood. The decision, in conjunction with Doe v Bolton, underscored
abortion as a constitutional right and gave the green light to
abortion-on-demand across the country. As a result, the U.S. Supreme Court
single-handily sanctioned the killing of 57 million preborn children through
abortions decades following the decision on January 22, 1973. On the 42nd
anniversary of the ruling, Roe’s impact – though weakening through a growing
pro-life movement – lives on.
1. “Jane Roe” of Roe v Wade is now
pro-life
The
woman behind the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that catapulted abortion-on-demand
in the United States never had an abortion. In fact, in the 1970s, Norma McCorvey
was seeking a divorce from her husband and sought a legal abortion when she
faced an unplanned pregnancy; however, pro-abortion attorney Sarah Weddington
used McCorvey’s case to overturn a Texas abortion prohibition. McCorvey, who is
now a pro-life advocate, has since dedicated her entire life to overturning the
law that bears her name.
“Back
in 1973, I was a very confused 21-year-old with one child and facing an
unplanned pregnancy,” McCorvey said. “I think it’s safe to say that the entire
abortion industry is based on a lie…. I am dedicated to spending the rest of my
life undoing the law that bears my name. You read about me in history books,
but now I am dedicated to spreading the truth about preserving the dignity of
all human life from natural conception to natural death.”
2. Roe and Doe permit abortions up to birth
Roe v Wade
and its companion case, Doe
v Bolton, rendered abortion permissible in the United States up to
nine months of pregnancy. In Roe,
the U.S. Supreme Court sanctioned abortions at roughly seven months, or prior
to the “viability” of a preborn child. In Doe,
the high court ruled that abortions can occur after the child is viable in
cases of a “health exception,” permitting a mother to abort her child.
Essentially,
abortionists can single-handily define what constitutes a “health risk.”
The definition is so broad that a woman can obtain an abortion for virtually
any reason. The Supreme Court, in justifying reasons to kill a child through an
abortion procedure, widened the term “health” to include “physical, emotional,
psychological, familial, and the woman’s age –relevant to the well-being of the
patient.”
3. Contrary to Roe, there is no fundamental “right” to
an abortion in the Constitution
Contrary
to what justices ruled in Roe
v Wade, the “right” to an abortion does not exist in the U.S.
Constitution. The court’s broad reading of the Constitution, based on the
concept of living constitutionalism, allowed justices to define a right not
found in the text or the original intent of the Constitution. Invoking the Due
Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, justices decided that a restriction
on abortion violates the right to privacy.
Justice
Blackmun wrote in the opinion for the landmark Supreme Court ruling, “This
right of privacy … founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal
liberty and restrictions upon state action … is broad enough to encompass a
woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” However, Edward
Lazarus, former clerk to Justice Blackmun contested: “A constitutional right
to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in
constitutional text, history, or precedent.” Tragically, the Due Process
Clause is now being used as a means for judicial activism instead of protecting
citizens from deprivation of life, liberty, or property without a fair process,
as it was intended.
4. Support for abortion before Roe was decided was fabricated
The
late Dr. Bernard Nathanson, former abortionist and co-founder of the
pro-abortion group NARAL, admitted that the number of women dying from
back-alley and self-inflicted abortions was completely fabricated prior to the Roe v Wade decision.
Abortion proponents claimed that a million women were obtaining illegal
abortions in the United States each year, and 5,000 to 10,000 women were dying
as a result of back-alley abortions. However, as Nathanson said, the numbers
were highly exaggerated to sway public opinion.
Nathanson
wrote: “I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the
others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the ‘morality’ of our
revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way
to correct it with honest statistics? The overriding concern was to get
the laws eliminated [laws against abortion], and anything within reason that
had to be done was permissible.”
The
idea that abortion is a necessary components of women’s health is still
engrained in public perception. What the media fail to mention are the
countless women who have died as a result of botched abortions, and the many
more who are emotionally and physically scarred from an abortion procedure.
While many deaths by abortion are covered up – fatalities labeled as
hemorrhaging or death by natural causes – pro-abortion backers push abortion as
a safe procedure with little risks.
5. After Roe, abortions peaked
In
the years following the landmark decision, the number of abortions rose
drastically, reaching a zenith of 1.6 million abortions in1990 before the
number gradually started to decline. Under the Roe v Wade decision and its counterpart, the
lives of 57 million preborn children in the United States have been violently
ended by abortion. The injustice of abortion is the nation’s greatest human
rights abuse, taking the lives of over 1 million each year.
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