Vindication
How many times have we written that Roe v. Wade was not based on constitutional principles and that, in that particular case, the Court legislated from the bench? For nearly five decades many gospel preachers have pointed that out. In case anyone doubts this allegation, below are some excerpts of articles written over the years just in Spiritual Perspectives.
From a January 20, 2002 article, written by your congenial editor in Spiritual Perspectives, which was titled, "ROE V. WADE: A GOOD DECISION?" came the following quote: "The Supreme Court's action followed no precedent whatsoever." The article also quotes from others such as law professor F. LaGard Smith: In his book, When Choice Becomes God, he offered the following assessment:
...the Court in Roe v. Wade blithely overturned centuries of precedent in which abortion had been considered both morally and legally unacceptable. Never before nor since has there been such sweeping disregard for fundamental morality in the halls of American justice (248).
This editor's comment after that quotation was as follows:
In other words, the Supreme Court set aside legal, moral, and medical precedents to render their infamous, life-terminating decision. They struck down the laws of 46 states in their determination to force the entire nation to agree with seven men. This decision has been productive of nothing good for this society, and it has fostered much evil. A once-great nation has been stained by the innocent blood of more than 40 million children. If Abel's blood cried out unto God, with what kind of shout will the dismembered bodies of these tiny human beings reach the gates of heaven?
Commenting on Roe v. Wade, I pointed out:
"...the decision says that the right to privacy requires allowing freedom to choose before the end of the second trimester." Does any sane person think that our Constitution says any such thing? Only highly interpretive and fanciful speculation could possibly find such an application when it is not actually there at all.
Following was the Burger Court's irrationale for their interpretation (with my response following):
The right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy (250).
Everyone should read these two amendments. The Ninth says: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Such is the entirety of the amendment. Exactly where does "right to privacy" or abortion fit into those words? The 14th Amendment is lengthier with five sections. Only the first one would apply; it appears below:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.
Once again, nothing about a "right to privacy" is mentioned. How ironic that an amendment which says that the rights of a person cannot be deprived is cited in order to deprive the rights of the individual that came into existence at conception! Smith commented thus:
Unable to pinpoint just exactly where in the Constitution the so-called "right of privacy" was to be found, the Court nevertheless was certain that, wherever it might be located, it was "broad enough" to permit abortions! (250).
Is it any wonder that for years those who know the law have been saying that Roe v. Wade did not interpret law but instead practiced that which is reserved for Congress: they legislated it? Congress could never have legislated abortion—then or now. No amendment allowing abortion would have ever passed the majority of states. Only through sheer desire did seven men "interpret" abortion to be a "Constitutional" right.
This analysis of Roe v. Wade is more than twenty years old. It was not the first examination of the decision, nor was it the last. But it is typical of several who examined the 7-2 decision and found it wanting. Byron White, appointed to the Court by John F. Kennedy, was one of the two dissenters against the decision, along with William Rehnquist. According to Wikipedia, White wrote that Roe was "an exercise in raw judicial power"; he criticized the decision for "interposing a constitutional barrier to state efforts to protect human life."
On November 14, 2004, I wrote an article for Spiritual Perspectives that dealt with the media's pro-abortion bias. It was titled, "Abortion: These are the Dark Ages." In describing a television program, it was observed:
The plot involved a group of people who aided young pregnant women with getting abortions before it was legalized in 1973 (not by the legislation of Congress—but rather the Supreme Court).
These words again criticize the illegitimacy of the decision. Much more could be cited from sermons and books by various authors that also offer the same criticism about Roe v. Wade. But now all of the criticism has been validated. Yes, all of us have been right for nearly half a century. The proof can be found in the recent Supreme Court decision.
Overturned and Denounced
The landmark case is now the one referred to as Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Below are excerpts from the recent, June 24, 2022 decision:
Held: The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.
The Constitution makes no express reference to a right to obtain an abortion, but several constitutional provisions have been offered as potential homes for an implicit constitutional right.
(These include the attempt to apply the 9th and 14th amendments to the Constitution to abortion. Notice the comment about the 14th amendment below.)
By the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, three-quarters of the States had made abortion a crime at any stage of pregnancy. This consensus endured until the day Roe was decided. Roe either ignored or misstated this history, and Casey declined to reconsider Roe's faulty historical analysis.
Like the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe was also egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided.
Without any grounding in the constitutional text, history, or precedent, Roe imposed on the entire country a detailed set of rules for pregnancy divided into trimesters much like those that one might expect to find in a statute or regulation.
Confirmation and Responses
So, after all these years of preachers claiming that Roe v. Wade was not based on any legal precedent, that it was, in fact, legislating from the bench, and that the decision rendered in 1973 was made up out of whole cloth, it is finally gratifying that the highest legal authority in the land, the Supreme Court, has agreed. Of course, we all knew it, but now our efforts have been vindicated.
Predictably, the response to Dobbs has been one of near hysteria by those who have no respect for either God's law or man's law. There has never been any question concerning the position of the Scriptures. God forms the spirit of man within him (Zech. 12:1). And He does so before man's birth. David acknowledges:
For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.
My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them (Ps. 139:13-16).
God told Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born, I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations" (Jer. 1:5).
In the New Testament, God uses the same Greek word, brephos, to refer to the unborn as He does one already born (Luke 1:41, 44; 2:12, 16). God does not use different words, such as fetus and infant. Whether born or unborn, a baby is a baby.
Scientifically, the baby has a beating heart between 18 and 21 days of conception. This is not the mother's heartbeat; this is the child's own heartbeat. The baby is not part of the mother's body—he or she inhabits a separate body. Stopping that beating heart is murder—whether through poison or some other horrifying technique. Those who have respect for the Scriptures will never consider having an abortion.
In 49 years of controversy on this subject, there has yet to be a response to either the Biblical or the scientific arguments made in favor of life. No one has come forth with, "I have an answer to the argument made from Luke 1-2." Who can successfully deny that a baby, after three weeks, has a beating heart? No, the pro-death camp is not afraid to flaunt their immoral position and lobby for (even insist upon) the death of infants. All such elected officials, whether national, state, or local (regardless of what political party supports them) should be voted out of office at the earliest opportunity (Pr. 14:34).