I still remember the moment when my wife got an update on her phone about a leaked Supreme Court document that SCOTUS was going to overturn the historic Roe v Wade decision from 1973.
Before that, I never thought I’d see the day. Today, it became official as the court overturns a constitutional right to abortion.
The aftermath of this decision will lead to intense debate. From the most ardent supporters of abortion, there will be sackcloth and ashes. Over the past several weeks, we’ve heard the various talking points about how necessary abortion is, and about how women will just do them illegally.
Overturning Roe doesn’t make abortion illegal. But it does give states broader authority to limit abortion. Numerous states already had laws to limit abortion already in place in case Roe was overturned.
Sadly, all abortions will not yet be stopped and there is still more work to do. But lives will be saved.
Before Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court in 1973, 30 states had made abortion illegal and it was only allowed under certain circumstances in 16 more. We hear a lot about democracy and “threats to democracy.” Roe was a threat to our humanity. Roe went against the will of the people and in the process, led to horrendous casualties.
We’ve made termination the easy way out over choosing life. We’ve undermined the value of life of those conceived in cases of rape and incest and made them political pawns as if their lives are expendable. We’ve talked about people being raised in less stable families as if they’d be better not being able to live at all. Millions of people who have lived through similarly challenging upbringings would beg to differ.
In the 50 years since Roe, I think of the sixty millions of babies who have been aborted and I don’t understand how all people aren’t heartbroken by that number. Tens of millions of lives have been created and terminated. Tens of millions of lives have been created yet never got to be lived. We’ve devalued life. We’ve taken something precious and made it a problem to be dealt with. We’ve taken something as tragic as abortion and turned it into a big business, both for abortion providers and those who work to lobby on its behalf.
Fifty years of this barbarity. I think of the millions of lives lost but also the kids and grandkids those people would have had. At the end of the movie Schindler’s List, they give Liam Neeson (who plays Oskar Schindler) a ring with an inscription from the Talmud which says “whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.”
Thanks for reading!
