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Abortion was legalized in the United States when the Supreme Court issued its decision on January 22, 1973, with a 7-to-2 majority vote in favor of Roe. Justices Burger, Douglas, and Stewart filed concurring opinions, and Justice White filed a dissenting opinion in which Justice Rehnquist joined.
Since that time 60,091,248 abortions have been conducted in the United States. (according to http://www.numberofabortions.com ). This is a staggering number of children deprived of an opportunity to live. Why?
Please read the excerpt below from Dr. Richard Selzer’s book ‘Mortal Lessons: Notes On The Art Of Surgery.’
“Our garbage is collected early in the morning. Sometimes the bang of the cans and the grind of the city trucks awaken us before our time. We are resentful, mutter into our pillows, then go back to sleep. On the morning of August 6th, the people of Woodside Avenue do just that. When at last they rise from their beds, dress, eat breakfast, and leave their houses for work, they have forgotten, if they had ever known, that the garbage truck had passed earlier that morning. The event has slipped into unmemory, like a dream. They close their doors and descend to the pavement.
“It is midsummer. You measure the climate, decide how you feel in relation to the heat and humidity. You walk toward the bus stop. Others, your neighbors, are waiting there. It is all so familiar.
“All at once you step on something soft. You feel it with your foot. Even through your shoe you have the sense of something unusual, something marked by a special ‘give.’ It is a foreignness upon the pavement. Instinct pulls your foot away in an awkward little movement. You look down, and you see… a tiny naked body, its arms and legs flung apart, its head thrown back, its mouth agape, its face serious. A bird, you think, fallen from its nest. But there is no nest here on Woodside, no bird so big. It is rubber, then. A model. A joke. Yes, that’s it, a joke. And you bend to see. Because you must. And it is no joke. Such a gray softness can be but one thing. It is a baby, and dead.
“You cover your mouth, your eyes. You are fixed. Horror has found its chink and crawled in, and you will never be the same as you were. Years later you will step from a sidewalk to a lawn, and you will start at its softness, and think of that upon which you have just trod. Now you look about; another man has seen it too. ‘My God,’ he whispers… There is a cry. ‘Here’s another!’ and ‘Another!’ and ‘Another.’
“Later, at the police station, the investigation is brisk, conclusive. It is the hospital director speaking. ‘Fetuses accidentally got mixed up with the hospital rubbish… were picked up at approximately 8:15 am by a sanitation truck. Somehow, the plastic lab bag, labeled hazardous material, fell off the back of the truck and broke open. No, it is not known how the fetuses got in the orange plastic bag labeled hazardous material. It is a freak accident.’
“The hospital director wants you to know that it is not an everyday occurrence. Once in a lifetime, he says. But you have seen it, and what are his words to you now? He grows affable, familiar, tells you that, by mistake, the fetuses got mixed up with the other debris. (Yes, he says other, he says debris.) He has spent the entire day, he says, trying to figure out how it happened. He wants you to know that. Somehow it matters to him. He goes on: aborted fetuses that weigh one pound or less are incinerated. Those weighing over one pound are buried at the city cemetery. He says this.
“Now you see. It is orderly. It is sensible. The world is not mad. This is still a civilized society… But just this once, you know it isn’t. You saw, and you know.”
I believe that life is sacred, both in the womb and outside the womb.
God said “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.” (Jeremiah 1:5)
David said “For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth.”(Psalm 139:13-16)
Luke said “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Luke 1:41)
God said “You shall not murder.” (Deuteronomy 5:17)
King Solomon said “There are six things which the LORD hates, Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him: Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood.” (Proverbs 6:16)
Biblical authors unanimously refer to the preborn as people. Job describes miscarried babies as “infants who never saw the light” (Job 3:16). Pregnant mothers are referred to throughout the New Testament as being “with child” (Matthew 1:18, Luke 2:5). Of Rebekah and Abraham’s twin sons, Moses records “the children struggled together within her” (Genesis 25:22). Luke refers to Elizabeth’s baby with the exact same word, υἱὸν (Greek for “son”), both before and after his birth (Luke 1:36, 57). They’re not ambiguous “blobs of cells” or “scrambled eggs” but sons, daughters, children, infants.
Justices White and Rehnquist wrote emphatic dissenting opinions.
White wrote:
I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the woman, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court
Rehnquist elaborated on several of White’s points, asserting that the Court’s historical analysis was flawed:
To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. As early as 1821, the first state law dealing directly with abortion was enacted by the Connecticut Legislature. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion. While many States have amended or updated their laws, 21 of the laws on the books in 1868 remain in effect today.
Life and children
