If the Supreme Court reverses on abortion, it will be righting grievous wrongs | Opinion
Because of Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, we live in a nation where abortion laws are among the most liberal among the Western democracies.
If the “leaked” opinion is correct and the court is prepared to reverse both Roe v Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, the court will finally correct two wrongly decided decisions. As University of Notre Dame law professor O. Carter Snead noted: “The court’s abortion jurisprudence has for decades imposed on the nation, without constitutional justification, an extreme, incoherent and deeply unjust regime pursuant to specious reasoning and constantly changing rules, standards and rationales.”
The case before the nation’s high court, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, is an appeal from Mississippi to keep its ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments for this, its biggest abortion case in decades, on December 1, 2021.
The court’s “official” decision is not expected before June or July 2022. Defenders of the current abortion regime are hysterically predicting “doom and gloom” if the court sides with Mississippi as the leaked document suggests. While pro-lifers will cheer if Roe is overturned, this eventuality will not, however, end abortion in the United States. But it would return decision-making about abortion policy to the people and their elected representatives. Pro-lifers hope that dismantling Roe will allow legislation protecting the unborn to move forward and to survive constitutional challenges in the future.
In 1973, the Supreme Court ignored the facts of human life in the womb, as well as the facts about abortion’s negative effects on women, to find a constitutional “right” to abortion.
Legalized abortion was a consequence of the sexual revolution of the ‘60s, which has wreaked havoc on our contemporary culture. Two generations have grown up with the notion, constantly fueled by media messages, that sex is merely a “recreational activity” that can be engaged in without thought of any possible consequences such as pregnancy or emotional harm.
Abortion not a solution
The “sexual revolution,” in separating the link between sexual activity and procreation, resulted in the breakup families and devaluation of the life of the unborn child. Abortion was seen as the solution to an unforeseen problem, a fallback position if contraception failed or was not used. But abortion is no solution — and it is no right. It is a wrong, a grievous wrong that has prematurely ended the lives of more than 60 million souls in this country alone since 1973.
To be sure, anticipating the reversal of Roe, we “pro-lifers” must redouble our efforts to accompany women and couples facing unexpected or difficult pregnancies. Legal protection of the unborn must also be accompanied by more care for mothers and their children so that it will be clear that choosing life does not hinder happiness or burden society. A society that opts for life looks to the future with hope. It can be a society where a woman is never forced to choose between her future and the life of her child.
As we wait for summer and the court’s ruling, we continue to pray for an end to legalized abortion; and we ask God to heal and reconcile those scarred by abortion — especially mothers who mistakenly saw abortion as a “solution” to a problem.
Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, at a National Prayer Breakfast in 1994, in the presence of Bill Clinton, then president of the United States: “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”
Most Rev. Thomas Wenski is archbishop of the Archdiocese of Miami.
This story was originally published May 4, 2022 at 3:39 PM with the headline "If the Supreme Court reverses on abortion, it will be righting grievous wrongs | Opinion."