Title: Did Supreme Court Roe vs. Wade Ruling Change Anything? 7 Things You Should Know…
It’s been over a year since the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling reversing federal control of abortion and returning the decision to the states.
Roe vs. Wade was always a flawed ruling by ideologically driven judicial activists on the Supreme Court. It seized control of abortion from the states—it was really a state’s rights issue, where each state’s citizens could decide what was best for them… what New Yorkers want maybe very different than what Tennesseans want.
Regarding the new court ruling, Justice Samuel Alito wrote, “We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision. We can only do our job.”
His job is to interpret the constitution… and there is no “constitutional right” to an abortion.
Here are 7 things you should know…
- Where do Americans stand on the subject? Americans are just as divided as ever
Fox News poll reported 61% of Americans disapprove of overturning Roe vs. Wade. Nearly 80% of female voters ages 18-49, two-thirds of suburban women, 60% of independents and even a third of Republican voters say they disapprove.
Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 65%. of U.S. adults disapprove of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Only 25% want their state to ban abortion—including only 32% in states where the procedure is banned—while 61% want state laws that guarantee access.
Nearly half of Americans (49%) think abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while the other half (49%) say it should only be legal in some cases such as rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother — (11%) say they are against abortion for any reason.
- Roe vs. Wade was bad law, to begin with
Roe vs. Wade was passed in 1973 by judicial activists on the Supreme Court. Right from the start, it sparked outcry and controversy. It forced 46 states to rewrite their abortion laws, in defiance of what most in those states wanted and making them “pro-abortion” states even if they didn’t want to be.Not only did it divide Americans, but it was just a bad ruling from the start… and it opened the floodgates to killing the unborn.
Scores of constitutional scholars, even those who were pro-abortion, believed the ruling to be unconstitutional.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote:
“The Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade exceeded its constitutional authority.
Under the legal system established by the U.S. Constitution, the power to make laws is vested in Congress and retained by state legislatures. It is not the role of the Supreme Court to substitute the policy preferences of its members for those expressed in laws enacted by the people’s elected representatives. The role of the judiciary in constitutional review is to determine if the law being challenged infringes on a constitutionally protected right.
Yale Law School professor John Hart Ely wrote, “Roe v. Wade is bad because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.”
Edward Lazarus, a former law clerk to Roe’s author, Justice Harry Blackmun, wrote:
“As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose, as someone who believes such a right has grounding elsewhere in the Constitution instead of where Roe placed it, and as someone who loved Roe’s author like a grandfather…
What, exactly, is the problem with Roe? The problem, I believe, is that it has little connection to the Constitutional right it purportedly interpreted. A constitutional right to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in constitutional text, history, or precedent. …
The proof of Roe’s failings comes not from the writings of those unsympathetic to women’s rights but from the decision itself and the friends who have tried to sustain it. Justice Blackmun’s opinion provides essentially no reasoning in support of its holding. And in the almost 30 years since Roe’s announcement, no one has produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms.”
- New State Laws
Total abortion bans are now in place in 13 states because of the new ruling.
Georgia bans the procedure at six weeks into a pregnancy.
Another 6 states have bans, but they are being blocked in court by pro-abortion groups.
There are 6 Democrat-controlled states that have no abortion restrictions at all—you can abort a baby up to the moment it’s born.
31 states have abortion laws that teeter somewhere in the middle, just before the fetus is viable… often weeks or less.
- Bringing back abortion through executive orders
The Biden Administration is already working hard to do an end-run around state bans on abortion through the use of executive orders.Although it’s unconstitutional, and executive orders can’t block states from banning abortion, the Biden Administration issued 2 executive orders anyway, allowing healthcare facilities to perform abortions in the case of “medical emergencies” and directing the Department of Veterans Affairs to perform abortions regardless of state laws banning the procedure.
The Biden Administration also successfully restricted Idaho’s abortion ban in court.
- The Results: Fewer AbortionsState abortion bans have forced abortion clinics in those states… some have relocated to abortion rights-friendly states– 43 clinics in 11 states have stopped performing abortions in the first month after the Supreme Court ruling.
This has resulted in 24,290 fewer abortions from July 2022 to March 2023.
- Will there be a big increase in the use of the pill?
The pill is used in more than half of all abortions. The most used “pill” is mifepristone, and it’s already becoming a hot topic in the abortion debate as to whether the pill will be legal or not.
51% of pill abortions were early-stage abortions—meaning the abortion occurred at a gestational age of 9 weeks or earlier.
Currently, 37 states allow some form of medication abortion: Mifepristone (the pill) is widely available in 22 states and can be prescribed by a clinician. However, in 15 states, the pill is restricted and must be prescribed by a doctor/physician.
Washington, New York, California, and Massachusetts are stockpiling abortion pills in anticipation of the Supreme Court overruling the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.
- Changing the law is not enough
You can change laws, but changing attitudes toward abortion is tough. Many women see abortion as their only option and will do whatever it takes to have an abortion—and kill their unborn child.
There are 3 ways you can help.
- Praying, of course, is always a way to help change hearts and minds—asking God to point you toward a good ministry or to groups that reach out to desperate women.
- Also, volunteering at a crisis pregnancy center is another way to help women in need who might be inclined to think abortion is the only way… or just volunteer to help a pregnant woman, perhaps a neighbor, to help her get through difficult times.
- Adoption is another way to help. Giving a child who otherwise would be aborted a loving home is another way to help.
I know. I was adopted, and I praise God, not only for my adoptive parents (a true gift from God) but for my birth mother for putting me up for adoption.
Read another article from here: Pastor & SCOTUS: Roe v. Wade [Church Reactions?]
Comments 3
I have usually voted conservatively. Questions: Why should a woman/and or child have child after child because of religion? Why should children who have been raped through strangers, relatives, parents not get an abortion (why ruin their lives?). Why make them go through the pain (to punish them for being handy to rape?). Adoption is wonderful, but have you checked on how many children are not being adopted? I don’t agree with women who use abortion to get ride of pregnancies over and over again. I could go on and on and. on, but what is the point. The Republican Party is losing voters like me because of this archaic attitude. The dems are no better.
Because sticking a baby in a blender is kind of f’ed up is it not? You can’t undo rape. Instead of making decisions on a bleak past it’s wiser to make them on the most beautiful outcome.
Personally, I think it should be decided as a local issue. Let the barbarians butcher their young as they always have. They don’t deserve them, let them exterminate themselves.
The difference in opinions about abortion is understood best when one chooses where to find truth. If you choose the view of your culture then you will believe that children are a burden and it’s a woman’s choice to get rid of her “problem” if she wants to. Abortion is called a “woman’s right” and “woman’s healthcare”. The baby is not given any voice in this opinion.
The other worldview is held by many who believe there is a God who loves his creation and desires the best for them. God loves men, women and children and has made “best practices” for their flourishing. If followed, families are formed who love and cherish all their children and bring the children up to respect Godly advice, and to help others who have needs. They become adults who help their neighbors, help the poor, help during great sickness, help after disasters at home and abroad, but most of all raise up children who will also make sacrifices to serve and love their fellow “imago Dei” all made in the image of God, therefore deserving of love and care.
These are actually two competing worldviews that present “truth” about the worth of babies in an opposing way of thinking. The conservatives choose the “imago Dei” worldview and others choose the common secular worldview.
We all choose our worldview and thus our strong opinions about abortion.
I am happy to be a conservative and will always put babies and their special care, at the top of my priorities.