Roe v Wade at 35

Tomorrow is the annual Blogs for Life conference at Family Research Council headquarters in Washington, DC, a somber commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the terrible and infamous Roe v Wade decision from the U.S. Supreme Court.

A provocative NewsMax essay today from Joseph Sobran summarizes three and a half decades of the debate:

Note the strange progress of the advocates of abortion. A generation ago, just before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that virtually all legal restrictions on abortion violated the U.S. Constitution, these people agreed that killing the unborn was evil; but they held that its evil might be minimized by legalizing and regulating it.

Then they shifted to what might be called an agnostic position: that nobody could say whether abortion is right or wrong — the question was always vague: “individual,” or “religious,” or something. Finally they arrived at a third position, flatly contradicting the first two: that abortion is a positively good thing, or as some put it, “a fundamental human and constitutional right.” Fundamental!

The more abortions, it follows, the better. At each step of the political battle, the reason is different, but the practical conclusion is the same. This is how the controversy has gone for a full generation now. At the same time, the anti-abortion side has never budged an inch. It is still exactly where it stood on Jan. 22, 1973. Neither its premise nor its conclusion has varied.

The pro-life movement has a long way to go, that’s for sure. The battle for hearts and minds is crucial. But, legally speaking, we should continue to persuade moderate-minded citizens that Roe v Wade should be overturned so states can decide this important question, and to elect officials who will nominate and confirm justices with originalist views of the Constitution who inevitably would make that happen. These are the next steps on which serious pro-lifers need to stay focused.