Roe is getting old
On this 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 36th annual March for Life in Washington was expecting over 200,000 people this year, estimating that the majority of them are young people, students, young adults, and even children with their parents. There are bunches of organizations that show up from across the country and even coming in from other countries to learn from this organized demonstration and take the idea back to their home countries. When I was hosting ‘The Right Questions’ a few years ago, I devoted the whole show that day to a revolving door of participants live from the March on cell phones, and I talked with some from South America and Europe. They are lively and energized and determined, this mass rally, upbeat and positive and hopeful in spite of the spread of abortion and euthanasia.
Why? Because a) in spite of appearances to the contrary (abortion movement victories over the past year under the Obama administration), they believe they are winning, especially as the newest polls show a majority of Americans now consider themselves pro-life. And b) they know they’re right. All euphemistic rhetoric and legal sleight of hand aside, the truth is that human life begins at conception, and that individual is a whole, separate, unique, living human being. And once you remove their right to life – legally deeming this whole class of human beings as ‘unworthy’ of constitutional protection at someone else’s discretion – no other rights matter. The civil rights movement taught us that. You don’t get more fundamental than that.
And so today, great numbers of pro-life people are amassed in Washington to witness their dedication to a very American right to life guaranteed in the Constitution (and abrogated by an activist Supreme Court, most notably Justice Harry Blackmun). People of all faiths are coalesced around this cause, and some people of no particular faith. The Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League is there each year, and their website explains why: “…because life is all there is and all that matters, and abortion destroys the life of an innocent human being.”
Atheists and agnostics know this, and intellectual honesty must admit it.
Fortunately, we’re seeing more and more intellectual honesty these days emerging out of the ‘pro-choice’ world. Like the recent news that a Planned Parenthood executive director quit her job and joined the pro-life cause after witnessing an abortion being performed through ultrasound. And the even more recent news that a Planned Parenthood director in Alberta challenged PP’s claim of giving women a choice or even information to make more than one, like information on natural family planning.
And here’s my personal favorite, the intellectually honest call to apply critical thinking skills to how we talk and think about abortion.
“A lot of people might look at me and say that I had a “better outcome†because of my abortion, as the original article implied is the result when a woman who chose abortion later finishes school or has a better financial status than a young mother. But I would gladly give every title, every possession, and every penny to my name in return for the opportunity to once again be that terrified 17-year-old on that cold exam table, sobbing, waiting for the doctor to come in, and to choose what I knew in my heart was really the right thing to do.”