Supreme Court should return the right to decide when life begins to the people
Maybe I am wrong, but up until a couple of years ago it seemed like abortion had been relegated to the pile of conversation topics inhabited by religion and politics, as in, do not talk about it under any circumstances. But as we enter 2022, we are on a historical precipice, and federal abortion law is the reason.
Early in December the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, and the fate of 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision could be in serious jeopardy. The Dobbs case centers on a Mississippi law that regulates abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The precedent set by Roe v. Wade and upheld in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992 established federal law that individual states could not regulate abortion before viability, or an unborn baby’s ability to survive outside the mother’s womb. Viability has been accepted as 24 weeks into a pregnancy. So, the Mississippi law pushes that line nine weeks earlier than Supreme Court precedent has allowed.
Based on the lines of questioning from the justices, bythe end of June when the decision is expected we could see abortion law handed back to individual states as it was before Roe. That means, as many have aptly pointed out, abortion will not become illegal in the United States. Nothing will change in those states that permit it, California being chief among them. Abortion was legal in California before Roe was decided and would remain so if it is overturned. In fact, Gov. Gavin Newsom immediately began touting California as a destination for those whose home states choose to restrict abortion — abortion tourism, if you will.
Over the last two years, we have heard “follow the science” enough times to make most of our eyes glaze over. But it is that concept that has created a shifting of public sentiment over abortion in the last decade or so. As advancements have been made in medical technology and ultrasounds become more accessible, we can see more clearly than ever exactly what the various stages of fetal development look like. And the fallacy of the “blob of tissue” has been blown out of the water. One can find ads right here in Fresno offering the service of aborting an unborn baby that is 24 weeks — six months — along. I implore all fair-minded people to search online images of a 24-week unborn child. This is not a stage of development at which Americans are comfortable allowing abortion, but it is where we are today under Roe v. Wade.
Even as the science advanced, the pro-abortion side became even more extreme. You had Virginia’s Gov. Ralph Northam talking about keeping an infant born through a failed abortion “comfortable” while the mom and doctor decide whether to let it continue living and Democrats in Washington, D.C., shot down a bill to give medical treatment to those babies.
In less than 20 years, Democrats went from President Clinton advocating for abortions being “safe, legal, and rare,” to women celebrating their abortions and pushing for unrestricted abortion rights up to and through birth. This is far from where the American people are. According to a June 2021 poll conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Research Center for Public Affairs, 65% believe that abortion should be illegal in the second trimester of pregnancy and 80% in the third trimester. The fear of pro-abortion advocates is if Roe is overturned, the bulk of America is troubled by current policy and is going to scale abortion way back.
The questions of when life begins and what should be the policies for protecting unborn life have been debated for thousands of years. In 1973, the Supreme Court took away the right of the people to debate these questions. It is time for the court to return that right.
