Jan. 22 should rightfully be marked as a day of lamentation.
the 25th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade that made abortion legal in the United States should be an occasion to lament the deaths of the estimated 35 million unborn babies whose lives have been terminated in the last quarter of a century.
It should be a time to mourn for a society whose culture and morality have failed women so grievously that millions of them feel they must be allowed to have their unborn children killed–and who celebrate abortion laws and court decisions as a hard-won “right.”
It should be a day to ponder why abortion is the most common surgical procedure performed in a nation urgently trying to reduce its health-care costs–and why so many unwanted pregnancies occur.
And it should be a day to examine the corrosive and distracting effects that abortion has had on American politics and on efforts to help Third World nations for more than a quarter of a century.
It’s surprising how little about abortion has changed in 25 years, despite enormous advances in prenatal science. New techniques of medical imaging show pictures of unborn babies looking not like clumps of tissue but real infants. Neonatal medicine has pushed the age of viability back, in some cases to 25 weeks, undermining the unscientific trimester rationale cited in Roe. Pregnancy can now be detected earlier and ended sooner.
But the fact that after 25 years and 35 million legal abortions, the issue is still a festering political sore shows its enormous emotional and moral impact. But most of the current political, legislative and judicial battles are fought on the fringes of the issue–over such questions as whether young teens should have to tell a parent before having an abortion or whether the atrocity known as partial-birth abortion should be banned.
Pro-choice supporters, who won the battle 25 years ago, feel they dare not yield on a single point, however small, lest it give supporters a wedge to some day overturn Roe. Besides, the perceived threats give them an excellent tool for raising money.
But the war isn’t over yet. Despite a notable lack of success, pro-life forces still keep trying to exploit any crack they can find, driven by a moral righteousness undimmed by 25 years of legal defeat. A scenario in which a Republican president could appoint enough new Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe vs. Wade still energizes millions of true believers.
The stale stalemate continues to affect state politics, national politics and international policies. Congress will try again this year to pass a ban on partial-birth abortions by enough margin to override another presidential veto. Some Republicans want to make support for the prohibition a qualifying test for party campaign support.
Members of Congress and the administration are still feuding over whether American tax dollars should be used, even through the UN or the International Monetary Fund, to help foreign family-planning groups if they are involved in pro-abortion advocacy. House Speaker Newt Gingrich is quoted as asserting that abortion will affect foreign policy “in perpetuity.”
One possible compromise suggested to get abortion off the nation’s political agenda has attracted almost no support. That is to define the beginning of life as the presence of heartbeat and brain waves–usually detectable at about eight weeks of fetal life–just as the end of life is measured by their absence. Abortion on demand would be legal only until then, except in instances of fetal abnormalities diagnosed later and risk to the mother’s health. This would also meet the pro-life objection that the fetus feels pain; it can’t until its nervous system begins to develop.
But the practice of abortion is moving slowly in that direction. At least half of all abortions in this country are now done before eight weeks of gestation and 88 percent before 12 weeks. More will occur earlier when the abortion drug RU-486 becomes easily available. And more women will use the morning-after pill and never even know if a conception occurred. (Prompt medical treatment can prevent most pregnancies caused by rape.)
Such changes will eventually shift many abortions away from easy-to-picket clinics and hospitals and muddle abortion statistics. But whatever the euphemisms, the rhetoric about women’s rights and the political power struggles involved, an anniversary that marks legalizing the killing of unborn children is not a day to celebrate.
