It’s the season for marches and memorials as we mourn the dead from legal abortion. But this year is special — if you can call it that. Roe vs. Wade is forty years old. January 22nd 1973 was the fateful day the U.S. Supreme Court gave us abortion on demand. Some states already allowed it, others were considering it. Some prohibited it. But the High Court took the process of deciding about the legality of abortion away from states. Somehow finding a right to abortion in the Constitution, the justices decreed it — seven to two.
That began the Roe regime under which more than 55 million babies have been legally murdered in their mothers’ wombs. The decision shocked the consciences of many Americans and provided the impetus for a nascent pro-life movement to become a powerful moral and political force. A recent TIME Magazine cover story is titled: “40 Years Ago. Abortion Rights Activists Won an Epic Victory With Roe V. Wade: They’ve been losing ever since.”
Losing perhaps, but far from defeated. We’d like Roe to be gone by now, overturned. Every justice appointed to the Supreme Court is scrutinized to discern what he or she would do with a challenge to Roe. We were almost there. Until Barack Obama became president. Now we face a health care law that extends abortion and requires taxpayers to fund it. And, in a clear violation of religious freedom and conscience, the infamous HHS Mandate, under ObamaCare, says abortion-causing contraceptives must be provided in employees’ health insurance policies. It’s an overreach now being challenged in courts across America.
If Roe v. Wade is struck down, all decisions about the legality of abortion will go back to the states. But, states are already taking back ground. In 2011, 24 state legislatures passed 92 abortion restrictions — more than double the total for any previous year. In 2012, 43 such laws passed in 19 states. These laws do things like prohibit abortions after 20 weeks gestation due to the science showing fetuses that age feel pain and also to the well-documented dangers of late term abortions to women’s health. States continue to pass requirements that the abortion-minded woman be provided with a sonogram of her unborn baby along with an explanation of that sonogram. And states are implementing strong restrictions on abortionists, abortion clinics, abortion-inducing drugs and tele-med abortions in which doctors prescribe abortion pills after performing an exam via web-cam. These laws, along with waiting periods and parental notification and consent for minors laws reduce the numbers of abortions.
States are having to fight the federal government in court over their new laws defunding abortion giant, Planned Parenthood.
Behind all the progress is a decided shift in public opinion about abortion. The TIME story says only two of five Americans call themselves “pro-choice”. The millennial generation is strongly pro-life. That’s good because there’s still much to be done.