Roe vs. Wade: A Human Rights Violation

Yesterday was the 35^th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court case ruling that sentenced millions of innocent American pre-born children to a cold, painful death.   As on all recent Roe vs. Wade anniversaries, I awoke with a deep sense of loss and agitation. On January 22, whether participating in the March for Life in DC or trying to focus on the daily demands of work, I feel like I could burst into tears, start screaming/preaching, or both at any moment.    Much to my dismay, I could not attend the March for Life yesterday due to obligations at work. I was comforted, however, by the fact that Caleb was able to attend the March and represent our little family.    

As I perused internet articles about the anniversary yesterday morning, I came across a blog written by a contributor to a website called RH Reality Check: Information and Analysis for Reproductive Health. The post, written by a woman named Susan Grossman, stirred me to the point of angry tears. Upon reading Ms. Grossman’s post, I took an early lunch break, at 9:30 AM, and responded to her post (although I did not post my response until today). To understand my response, you may wish to read Ms. Grossman’s original post.  I have since visited the site again and noticed that the author changed her post rather dramatically.  So if my reply seems misguided, it is because I am responding to her original post.  

 Ms. Grossman,    

You claim that Justice Blackmun and other “heroes” of the Pro-Choice movement were “brave enough to stand up to Pro-Life rhetoric.” I beg to differ. The arguments presented by your Pro-Choice heroes like Justice Blackmun are based on nothing more than pragmatic ideas void of any foundation in law, morality, or logic.    

You contend that the “right” for a woman to terminate her pregnancy is guaranteed and protected by the U.S. Constitution. Point me to the Article and Section, please. You cannot because, in reality, the so-called “right to privacy” cited as the basis for the Roe vs. Wade decision is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. Now, if the right is not found in the Constitution—the law which you admit governs our land—then one must assume that the consenting Justices of the Roe vs. Wade decision simply created a new right. Where in the Constitution, which you herald as the bulwark of “reproductive rights,” or in any ancient, eternal, natural, or human law do we find any indication that Supreme Court Justices, or any human being, are granted the power to create rights? Nowhere.    

Human leaders have never and will never have the ability to create nor destroy a right. When African Americans were shamefully enslaved in our country, did their enslavement remove from them their natural right to be free? No! The slave’s rights were violated, not removed. To say otherwise is to suggest that the slave master’s treatment of his African slave actually defined the worth of the slave, the man.

It is not mankind’s recognition of a right that makes the right legitimate, for the African slave who bore cruelty at the hand of his master in the antebellum world was no less human, no less deserving of respect or justice than the African-American businessman today. Truly, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not suddenly create rights for African-Americans in the United States; rather, in the Act, Congress supported and protected a right guaranteed to all mankind since the inception of the world—the right to freedom and equality under the law.    

If a judicial or legislative body is artificially granted the power to create “new rights,” do they not also consequentially have the power to destroy such rights? For this reason, many of America’s Founding Fathers were leery of ratifying the Bill of Rights because they feared the action would be viewed as the government bestowing rights. They understood that lawmakers and leaders of society are granted the crucial task of protecting and supporting the inalienable rights “endowed by [our] creator,” those rights so masterfully recorded by the greatest minds and spirits the world has yet seen (men like Moses, Aquinas, Locke, and Jefferson).  

 Neither the institution of the Supreme Court nor the individuals with whom you are so enamored are or were infallible. One must only look to the Dred Scott ruling to see a decision handed down from the Supreme Court which demonstrated its sheer human fallibility. Years later the Supreme Court reversed its decision, stating that the natural rights of African-Americans trumped the Supreme Court’s prior ruling.   

Why this long dissertation on rights, law, and the role of the Supreme Court and the public leaders? Pro-Life advocates are often accused of solely using emotionally-charged arguments and rhetoric. While I too become moved by the gruesome reality of abortion, I am driven by truth—the ethical, scientific, and lawful basis for a pre-born child’s right to life.   

Indeed, neither the Supreme Court nor any legislative body may create a right which transgresses on the right of another human being. And yes, pre-born children are, in fact, human beings. Just ask Harvard University Medical School Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, or Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni Professor of Obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania, or Dr. Jerome LeJeune, the genetics professor at the University of Descartes in Paris who discovered the Down’s Syndrome chromosome. They all state the same fact: life begins at conception.   

So, if you praise the work of Pro-Choice activists, legislators, and judges next year, please do so while at least facing the facts. Be intellectually honest. If you do, you will realize that it is the Pro-Choice argument, not the Pro-Life argument, that is based entirely on emotion, convenience, and manipulation of the facts. Perhaps you will recognize that Roe vs. Wade strayed from the blind objectivity and protection of the law and instead relied on the feeble, inflated intellects of a few.