Some Insightful Op-Ed

From the Washtington Times . . .

On Jan. 23, 1973, the day after the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade, the New York Times ran this headline: "Supreme Court Settles Abortion Issue." That was 32 years ago, and if the thousands who rallied yesterday in downtown Washington for the annual March for Life are any indication, then perhaps the NYT would now consider running a correction.

    "Settled" is how many pro-choicers considered the issue then — and still do — when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. For example, imagine if in 1986 — 32 years after the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, ending public school segregation — there was still a strong and growing segregationist movement in the United States. Imagine if segregationists were being elected to Congress, or that a segregationist held the White House. Rather, in a relatively short time, the sweeping changes decided by Brown came to be seen by the public as both constitutionally and morally right. The same cannot be said of Roe, a fact that says more about the decision than pro-choicers would care to admit.

If anything, Roe succeeded only in forming a coalition of otherwise politically disinterested voters that has significantly strengthened the Republican Party. For Democrats, Roe has become a political liability: If they aren’t sufficiently pro-Roe, their base will ignore them; yet if they are, they cannot hope to make inroads into red states. This has led to the untenable and absurd position held by many Democrats (and a few blue-state Republicans), who say that they are personally against abortion, but in favor of Roe.

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Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

11 thoughts on “Some Insightful Op-Ed”

  1. Good stuff, although at the very least that segregationist analogy needed to be balanced by another positive analogy — say, the ongoing abolitionist movement in the wake of the Dred Scott verdict.

  2. I didn’t even pick up on that till you noted it, Steven. You’re right– and I would much rather be compared to an abolitionist than a segregationist, thankyouverramuch. 🙂

  3. Steven:
    For a long while I’ve seen parallels between the abolitionist movement and the anti-abortion movement (including, unfortunately, the violent, John Brown phase).
    The real question is what would/will happen if Roe goes away and the majority of states (or the states with a majority of the population) democratically vote keep abortion legal. I think psychologically it’s easier to have a simple, nine-person, robed bogeyman than to deal with the majority of the population around you disagreeing on so fundamental an issue.
    The way to avoid that would be for the Supreme Court to read the unborn into the definitions of “life” and “persons” in the Constitution.

  5. The way to avoid that would be for the Supreme Court to read the unborn into the definitions of “life” and “persons” in the Constitution
    That would be the best way. But, I wonder if the reverse would happen. 32 years after Roe is overturned, would there be marches of tens of thousands protesting the reversal? Would a new composition of the SCOTUS reverse the reversal? Would we still be as split as a nation over this issue, or would the American public finally come to consensus as they have on segregation (although it seems some issues from that era are still unsettled, or are becoming unsettled again – eg, affirmative action).

  6. Someone please explain why it is untenable and absurd to be personally against abortion but in favor of Roe.
    I do not agree with the personally opposed position. My brain naturally tells me it is wrong. I just have difficulty in explaining why the “personally opposed” position is wrong.

  7. Here is why I think personally opposed is wrong:
    You believe murder is wrong;
    you are “personally opposed” to abortion b/c you believe it is murder;
    Roe allows the murder in the form of abortion.
    To say you support Roe while being personally opposed means that you support something you oppose.
    To get around this obvious contradiction, many will argue that my view of abortion as murder is a personal one only, and I should not force that view on others. However, whether abortion is murder (the intentional killing of an innocent human being) is not a matter of opinion but an observation of fact. Either an innocent human being is being murdered, and therefore it is wrong for you and everyone else, or it is not, and therefore not wrong for anyone.
    Even assuming that it were a matter of opinion, by being personally opposed, you believe it is wrong, not just wrong for you, but wrong in principle (b/c you personally believe it is murdering innocent human beings). This would be analogous to saying that, while I believe beating your wife is wrong, I would not impose that belief on anyone else. Thus, personal opposition yet support of Roe is no different than personal opposition to wife beating, yet supporting a law which allows it. Law is, in essence, the imposition of personal beliefs of one or more people on the entire community (whehter it be by a judge, a legislature, the voters, etc.).

  8. In short, personally opposed requires you to act contrary to what you believe to be true. You believe abortion = murder, yet you support its continuance through Roe. Your professed belief does not equal your action.
    A rational person acts in conformity with what he believes to be true, not contrary to what he believes to be true. Thus, he is either lying about being personally opposed, therefore support of Roe is not contrary to what he believes to be true, or he is irrational. Many in the personally opposed camp, I would venture, are lying about personal opposition – but lying more to themselves than anyone else (that is, I think that, deep down, they don’t believe it is murder, although they claim to “personally” believe it is).

  9. Getting back to the op ed, though, in fairness, Brown and the ensuing struggles of the sixties/seventies were really the last battle of eliminating the vestiges of slavery. So to say that Brown was no longer protested, no longer had segregationists, etc. 30 years later is a bit apples and oranges with abortion. Slavery was around from the beginning, and did not become illegal until 1865 or so. It took a hundred years to fully implement the eradication of it. Throughout that time, certainly within 30 years of the Civil War, you still had large resentment of the abolishment of slavery in the form of Jim Crow, etc. I would view an end of abortion’s legality more analogous to the end of slavery’s legality in 1860’s, not the 1950’s. So the more relevant comparison would seem to be was abolition of slavery still contested/protested in 1895?

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