On this day in history, January 22nd in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 7-2 ruling in Roe v. Wade that a “Texas statute criminalizing abortion in most instances violated a woman’s constitutional right of privacy.” [1]
While subsequent cases related to abotion have been heard by the Court, the Roe decision set a precedent that unborn children have no rights and that his or her mother has final decision about the child in her womb. [2]
Please read an article from The Gospel Coalition’s editor, Joe Carter: “9 Things You Should Know about Roe v. Wade” to succinctly learn more about this landmark case.
The Roe decision pits the greatest of American values, found in the Declaration of Independence of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” at odds against each other. Granting an unborn child’s life means denying the liberty of a mother that does not want to have the child. However, protecting the liberty of a mother who is unhappily pregnant means denying and killing the life of an unborn child.
Authors Jonathon Leeman and Matthew Arbo state that tension this way: “the “pro-choice forces employ our most sacred American values to maintain their regime: ‘‘choice’ or ‘freedom’ or the ‘rights of a woman.’ There are no greater arguments than these in the American moral universe. Except . . . life.” [3]
Being pro-life as a Christian means believing each unborn child who has life and personhood at conception is a gift from God that He knit together within his or her’s mother womb (Ps. 139). Pro-life belief also means choosing to deny one’s liberty to serve – serving fathers and mothers who need support to raise a child; serving children in the foster system; and serving, with compassion, women who have had an abortion and who live with those memories.
Mother Teresa said of Roe vs. Wade, “ America needs no words from me to see your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts — a child — as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters” And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign.” [4]
Mother Teresa in a sense reminded Americans of the beginning of the sentence within the Declaration of Independence that states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” [5]
Life is endowed by our Creator. And on this anniversary of Roe v. Wade and everyday we must protect and serve the lives of children and families in every way possible. May the Lord help us.
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Footnotes:
- https://www.britannica.com/on-this-day/January-22
- https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-you-should-know-about-roe-v-wade/
- https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/why-abortion-makes-sense/
- https://www.stjoanofarcchurch.org/Downloads/e8304718-37cb-4c45-81c8-4cb54ae8eb99.pdf
- https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript