Abortion Twenty-Nine Years Later

by Kerby Anderson

January 22, 2002 marks the twenty-ninth year anniversary of the infamous abortion decision of Roe v. Wade. Before this anniversary fades from our memory, perhaps it is worthwhile to revisit the decision to lead to this abortion holocaust. This is an issue we address at almost every Worldview Weekend, but I believe we cannot talk about it enough. So let's go back to that fateful decision back on January 22, 1973.

Essentially, the Supreme Court's verdict rested on two sentences: "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 an answer."

Although the sentences sounded both innocuous and unpretentious, they were neither. The Supreme Court's non-decision was not innocuous. It overturned state laws that protected the unborn and has resulted in over 40 million abortions in the United States.

The decision also seemed unpretentious by acknowledging that it did not know when life begins. But if the Court did not know, then it should have acted "as if" life was in the womb. The Court's non-decision was actually a decision to legalize abortion.

This case also began a tradition of drawing lines. In this case, the justices opted for biological criteria in their definition of a "person" in Roe v. Wade. The Court chose the idea of viability and allowed for the possibility that states could outlaw abortions performed after a child was viable. But viability was an arbitrary criterion, and there was no biological reason why the line couldn't be drawn much later.

As if to prove that, Dr. Francis Crick suggested in the British journal Nature that if "a child were considered to be legally born when two days old, it could be examined to see whether it was an ‘acceptable member of human society.'" Obviously this is not only an argument for abortion; it is an argument for infanticide.

Other line-drawers suggested a cultural criterion for personhood. Ashley Montagu, for example, argued that "a newborn baby is not truly human until he or she is molded by cultural influences later." Again, this is more than just an argument for abortion. It is also an argument for infanticide.

And Joseph Fletcher argued in his book Humanhood that "humans without some minimum of intelligence or mental capacity are not persons, no matter how many of these organs are active, no matter how spontaneous their living processes are." This is not only an argument for abortion and infanticide; it is also adequate justification for euthanasia.

So this is the legacy of this infamous Supreme Court decision. Once the justices began drawing lines, others drew them in unexpected and dangerous ways. In the end, Roe v. Wade didn't just legalize abortion; it started the moral slide to other issues like infanticide and euthanasia.

Let's remember what the Court did twenty-nine years ago and dedicate ourselves to set it right. I'm looking forward to seeing you at the next Worldview Weekend. Until then, take a moment to visit me at the Probe Web Site (www.probe.org).