Roe Gone? God Willing!

Brothers and sisters, let us assume for a moment that the draft opinion leaked from the Supreme Court yesterday evening will ultimately be the Court’s ruling concerning Row v. Wade.  May it be so!  This has been a dreadful law since its beginning in 1973. It is well passed time to lay it to rest.

But understand what this means—and doesn’t mean.  It means that elective abortions are no longer protected as a matter of constitutional law.  It doesn’t mean that elective abortions are banned. It means that the question of elective abortion is returned to the political branches of government to decide the matter—that is, to the congresses of the fifty states and to the federal congress.

And not to say that the same issues which have been argued for fifty years as a matter of federal constitutional law will now be argued by elective representatives in every state.  Actually, the issues which will have to be debated in all these congresses will be quite different, and much, much more relevant to the question.  As a matter of constitutional law, the issues raised and argued tend to be rather dry and far removed from the facts surrounding elective abortions.  Debated before judges are issues of privacy, standing, undue burden, stare decisis, federalism, textual interpretation, “substantive due process”, equal protection, and the like.  Looking only at this dry, legal list one would never know the underlying issue was a right to an elective abortion!

But here are some things which actually do relate to elective abortions which have not been argued, debated, or even treated in the courts for fifty years, but which will now have to be articulated and debated, openly, directly and clearly by elected officials and the citizens who vote for them.  For example, When does human life begin?  If not at conception, then when?  And why then?  What right to live does an unborn child have?  And who decides? Under what circumstances can a mother’s rights, whatever they are, trump an unborn child’s right to live?  More specifically, Does a mother’s liberty right—“my body, my choice”—overrule an unborn child’s right to exist and be born (a child, mind you, with its own body)? Laws will have to be drafted, and politicians who, up until now, have been able to hide behind legal constitutional arguments having nothing to do with the real matter at hand—these very politicians will have to make their choices clear and defend them. A politician who wants to protect the right of a woman to choose—in itself an admirable thing to defend—will have to defend what allowing that right will mean in the case of an unwanted, but otherwise healthy, pregnancy.

This debate is far from over.  Hopefully, though, it will at least begin to address seriously the real issue: the life of an unborn, human child. And my prayer is that, at least among some of the electorate and some of those they elect, such a child’s right to live will be recognized and protected. God willing, there will be some children born simply because their unborn life was protected—children who will grow up, and live, and have children of their own, and may even live in eternity with Christ, who otherwise might never have seen the light of day. God willing!