I was in the middle of another essay when the long-awaited blockbuster decision came out: Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the 15 week limit Mississippi abortion law, which also brought into question the Roe v Wade and Casey precedents, which provided for a purported legal right of the mother to abort her child under many, if not most circumstances since 1973
The Mississippi law had been written specifically to challenge Roe. The 6-3 conservative court had increasingly allowed more restrictive red state abortion laws. As the reader may be aware, a rough draft of Alito's majority opinion overturning Roe had been leaked; as I write, we still don't know who or why. There has been speculation of progressives of trying to put public pressure against the Alito opinion or worries that Chief Justice Roberts trying to peel off one or 2 votes for his Dobbs-only concurrence.
The Dobbs decision is cited above. Dobbs carried 6-3, and Alito's opinion, as expected, carried 5-4.
Let's be clear: I have noted in multiple posts and probably hundreds of tweets.that I'm pro-life and have been all my life. Although my religion (Roman Catholicism) has consistently opposed the practice since the earliest generations of the Church, I never heard about abortion from my folks on their own or at church. I already knew from science class at school that human life begins at conception. I've mentioned this in the past: as a boy, I stumbled across the word 'abortion' in a newspaper; I asked my Mom what it meant. My Mom basically described a D&C procedure in nonjudgmental terms. I was truly horrified, protesting to Mom, "But that's murder! What does the Church say? It must be against it" And the Church has been, consistently opposed it since the Didache. It was a subject of one of my first college research papers at OLL; there was a theological dispute over the gravity of the sin depending on the quickening, the point of ensoulment, an Aristotelian construct. The sin was exceptionally grave after ensoulment in the view of some theologians, although early abortion was seen as the frustration/rejection of God's gift of new life. The relevant stage hypothesis of fetal development was quickly abandoned with advances in modern biology. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a pro-abort Catholic like Biden, has made misleading reference to the dated ensoulment controversy to rationalize her public contradiction with the Church's public opposition.
I was ardently pro-life before college and before Roe v Wade. Make no mistake. I realize, like suicide, it's very difficult to prevent abortion. In many cases we may not even know a woman is pregnant until she starts showing; she can engage in behavior risky to the preborn child, there are abortifacients, and there are locations where the practice is legal, not to mention black markets for services in demand under the cloak of anonymity. From a pro-life perspective, the bigger issue has always been one of moral persuasion. In many cases, it can be showing the mother visual evidence of the human life growing inside of her, providing the viable alternative of adoption if she worries about the burden of motherhood after birth.
Why make abortion illegal? To protect human life. Society is vested in its own sustainability. To discriminate against human life at stages of development is arbitrary and morally unacceptable.My understanding is that when abortion laws have been enforced, the focus has been on enablers, like providers. We pro-lifers see mothers also as victims of abortion, not unlike women who have suffered miscarriages, and object to sanctions like imprisonment. There are pro-life resources to support women after the traumatic tragedy of abortion, like Catholic-sponsored Project Rachel.
The Constitutional abomination of Roe v Wade haunts my memories to the present. Millions of babies have been killed in the pro-abort era following Roe. The SCOTUS' power grab from traditional abortion regulation by the states was a convoluted mess which concerned even pro-abort Justice RBG. The fact is colonial America and the young USA drew from British law, including legal sanctions after the quickening.
The Dobbs' overturn of Roe was long overdue, as SCOTUS found itself having to referee countless state challenges, even as viability of the child outside the womb continues to increase to 22 to 23 weeks and biology shows earlier evidence of the development of functional organs and nervous systems of the child weeks after conception.
I do not underestimate the pro-life challenges in a post-Roe era. You have powerful crony interests, like the leading abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. You have generations raised up in a pro-abort culture. You have at least 16 states plus DC with pro-abort laws on the books, with many of them, like California, promoting abortion tourism, even offering to subsidize expenses. Even some of my close friends over the years are pro-aborts.
I have no intent of constantly publishing on abortion, but I may have to as events evolve post Roe. I personally prefer a softer approach, not an in-your-face like a former nephew-in-law, aimed at persuasion, like I try to do through my daily post "choose life" clips.
