Roe vs. Wade: Reflections of a Foreigner

In reflecting on the recent legal overturn of Roe vs. Wade in the United States, I am acutely aware of my status as a foreigner here in Canada living north of all the action.  The decisions of the United States Supreme Court have no legal force in Canada, though of course whatever happens down south has cultural reverberations north of the border.

Here in the Great White North abortion is entirely legal and government-funded throughout the entirety of a woman’s pregnancy, so that a mother may have her child killed for any reason at any time prior to the child’s emergence from its mother’s body.  Moreover, debate over the legitimacy of the institutionalized genocide is politically impossible, so that no politician entertaining hopes of being elected will touch the issue with a forty-foot barge pole.  Canadian wombs can therefore be dangerous places in which to live, and there is absolutely no sign that this will change anytime soon.  The only real mystery is why God has not struck us all down for institutionalizing the murder of infants.  The real deity reigning in Canada is Molech.

It is for this reason that I can only applaud the United States Supreme Court for striking down Roe vs. Wade.  This does not, as I understand it, ban abortion in the United States, but only declares that such murder is not a constitutional right.  The issue is therefore kicked downstairs to the State level.  Individual States may decide to ban abortion within their borders, if they wish.  Those wishing an abortion within such States will therefore have to spend time and money to cross the State border into another State in which such murder is allowed.  What effect this will have on the number of abortions performed in the United States is at the present time uncertain.  It might mean that the number of abortions will decrease.  It might mean that those wishing an abortion will simply have to travel a little more to procure the slaughter of the unborn foetus.  Time will tell.

Regardless of the ultimate statistical result, it remains true that a nation, speaking through its courts, should overturn unjust laws, whether it be a law permitting slavery or a law permitting the murder of the unborn.  Overturning unjust laws draws a line in the moral sand, and declares to its citizens (and to God) the moral foundation on which they wish to build their society.  Symbols have power, and symbols matter, and the overturning of Roe vs. Wade is such a symbol.

Euphoria, however pleasant, must eventually give place to pragmatism.  Overturning Roe vs. Wade does not turn back the cultural clock fifty years or return us to the year 1973.  Since Roe vs. Wade was passed, the United States, in step with the morally-collapsing West generally, has seen several generations grow up with the ingrained notion that a woman’s decision to kill the child within her is simply another instance of her right to control her own body.   Her right over her own body (so that, for example, she cannot be sterilized without her consent) is not disputed.  Her right to kill her child—i.e. her right over someone’s else’s body which happens temporarily to be living inside her—is disputed, and her right over her own body does not include her right to kill her unborn child.  But since Roe vs. Wade was passed in 1973 generations of people have concluded that the right to abort a child is part and parcel of a woman’s physical autonomy.

In other words, for the last fifty years we have been undergoing continuous brainwashing, and such a long and extensive programme of brainwashing cannot be overcome by Supreme Court fiat or by a few posts on Facebook.  What one Supreme Court can overturn, another can counter-overturn and re-instate.  The recent overturn of Roe vs. Wade is not the end of a battle, but the beginning.  The real battleground is not in the Supreme Court, but in the hearts of men and women.  As long as millions regard a foetus as having no more right to life than an appendix or a tonsil, the battle continues.

This means that as well as exulting in the recent legal decision, pro-life people (which include, let us remember, not just Christians) must continue to strive to put into place options for women to bring their children to term who might have otherwise aborted them—options which include easy adoption and financial support to help such mothers.  We must also strive to educate an entire brainwashed generation in what actually occurs in mother’s wombs after conception.  This should not be as difficult an operation as the former, since medical science is clearly on the side of the pro-life people.  That is, such science declares that 1. after conception something is growing in the womb of the woman so that, whatever label you give it, it is clearly alive; and 2. such life is human life, since when it emerges from mommy’s womb it is not a cat or a dog, but a human being.

The only question remaining is whether or not our society will protect all human life, or only human life that it likes.  Our society may, as the Nazis did (forgive the historical reference, but the example is too parallel and precise to ignore) decline to protect human life it regards as unworthy.  The Nazis, while admitting that they were human, declined to protect Jewish life or the lives of the severely handicapped.  Our society, while admitting that the unborn represent human life, may decline to protect it because its mother decides she doesn’t want to.

These decisions, please note, are not based on a scientific declaration that a foetus is not alive or not human, but solely on society’s arbitrary decision not to extend legal protection to it.  The door stands wide open to kill the child after birth (as the Romans did in the past), and to kill the elderly (as Canada is doing in the present).  All these murders share the same root—the conviction that protection of innocent human life is not a right, but is based on political decision and legal fiat.

The overturning of Roe vs. Wade is inflaming and enraging an entire generation of brainwashed citizens, who regard it as a misogynistic tyranny imposed upon women by the heartless right wing.  Their grief and rage are palpable, and in some places have resulted in violent retaliation.  This rage is understandable, given the years of brainwashing.  The challenge is not to respond with rage in return, but with a peaceful and loving heart, and with a determination to speak the truth and to educate.  Whether or not the hearts of millions can be softened and converted by such education is currently unclear.  But we have to try.  The millions of the aborted children, a vast army standing in heaven and gazing down upon the murderous West, look to us to do our duty.  The souls of future pregnant women and their children hang in the balance.  Now that Roe vs. Wade has been overturned, the hard battle for human hearts can begin.