Even for those who lived through it, most of 1973 has been long since forgotten. Notre Dame topped the college football rankings that year with a perfect 11-0 season. The Sting took home the best-picture Oscar and The Waltons swept five Emmy categories. The average American household in 1973 earned $10,500, the minimum wage was $1.60, and a first-class stamp cost 8
cents. One event from Jan. 22, 1973, is far from forgotten. The Supreme Court's
Roe vs. Wade decision has often seemed to be signed in blood rather than ink.
That decision authorized the legal killing of unborn children nationwide,
and 40 million have died since then. The decision also animated a political
movement that contributed to capturing the White House five times out of
seven elections, leading to everything from historic tax cuts to beefed-up
defense spending.
Yet the pro-life movement's ultimate legal goal of overturning Roe has
proved elusive. Pro-life activists employing three different
strategies—legislate, litigate, and demonstrate compassion—have managed to
pass laws that protect some unborn children and change the minds of some
parents. Those measures have helped to cut the ratio of abortions to live
births by more than 25 percent.
Still, about 1.3 million American women—according to Planned Parenthood's
research arm, The Alan Guttmacher Institute—have abortions every year, a
grim testimony to the continued influence of Roe vs. Wade.
Editor's note: Just think of the wasted "human capital" included in
these statistics, including potential priests, bishops, cardinals, nuns,
plus doctors, housewives and other professionals.
Source: Pro-Life E-News (enews@interlife.org)
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ROE V. WADE AND FABRICATIONS FOR MEDIA CONSUMPTION
As we approach the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, it is instructive to
read the testimony of former abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson. In his
statement, "Confession of an Ex-Abortionist," he admits to having been
responsible for 75,000 abortions. As a founding director of NARAL
(National Rights Action League), Nathanson describes the tactics they
used: "We persuaded the media that the cause of permissive abortion
was a liberal, enlightened, sophisticated one. Knowing that if a true poll
were taken, we would be defeated, we simply fabricated the results of
fictional polls. We announced to the media that we had taken polls and
that 60% of Americans were in favor of permissive abortion laws. This is
the tactic of the self-fulfilling lie. Few people care to be in the
minority. We
aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by
fabricating the numbers of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The
number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually.
The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures
took root in the consciousness of Americans convincing many that we
needed to crack the abortion law..."Isn't it amazing that not one reporter
actually tried to verify these figures or determine their sources?
Source: Eagle Forum (eagle@eagleforum.org)
PRIESTS FOR LIFE BI-WEEKLY COLUMN
Extreme Compromise
Fr. Frank Pavone, Priests for Life
Thirty years have passed since Roe vs. Wade and its companion case
Doe vs. Bolton were issued by the US Supreme Court. As many of us
continue to work to overturn these decisions, many think that the
decisions constitute a "compromise" position on the divisive issue of
abortion. After all, they say, our current national policy on abortion
allows a woman to have a child if she wants, and to abort the child if
she wants.
But Roe and Doe are about as far away from a "compromise" as you can
find. The decisions allow for abortion throughout the entire nine months
of pregnancy, and do not recognize any right of the unborn child to be
spared death by abortion. With a nation divided about abortion, one might
think that under a "compromise" solution one could find some reason to
protect at least some unborn children. But in Roe and Doe, one searches
in vain for any situation in which an unborn child is protected. As the
University of Detroit Law Review pointed out, "The Supreme Court's
decisions...allowed abortion on demand throughout the entire nine months
of pregnancy" (Paul B. Linton, Enforcement of State Abortion Statutes
after Roe: A State-by-State Analysis, Vol. 67, Issue 2, Winter 1990).
In this framework, every unborn baby is disposable. Every. That's hardly a
"compromise" position.
"Leave it up to the woman to decide" sounds to many like a fair compromise.
But this position completely destroys equality before the law, because it
constitutes a complete removal of protection from the child. The lives of
unborn children who are wanted and carried to term do not have any more
protection from the law than the lives of unborn children who are unwanted
and carried to the abortionist. The lives of the wanted are protected only
by their "wantedness," which, of course, can be subject to change at any time.
As far as the law is concerned, they are all non-persons, regardless of
circumstance. That's hardly a "compromise."
A "compromise" usually, and by definition, allows some accommodation to
both sides in the dispute. But current abortion policy allows no
accommodation to the claims that innocent human life makes upon us.
The more you know about the Roe and Doe decisions, the clearer this
becomes. In fact, the Gallup polling company, in an extensive analysis of the
Opinions of Americans on abortion, admits that the level of support in surveys for
Roe vs. Wade is lower if more information about the decision itself is offered
in the question, and higher if less information is offered. (See
www.gallup.com/poll/specialReports/pollSummaries/sr020122iii.asp)
In Judgement at Nuremberg, one of those responsible for the Holocaust says
that he "never thought it would go that far," and was told that it "went
that far" as soon as a single innocent life was taken. There is no room for
"compromising" about human life. Permitting one life to be destroyed is already extreme.
Unless we're all protected, we're all in danger.
Source: Priests for Life (pfl@priestsforlife.org)
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