Homework
Legal Abortion Is a Social Injustice
Table of Contents: Further Readings
Reprinted from First Things, "Roe: Twenty-Five Years Later," January 1998. Reprinted with permission from First Things.
First Things is a monthly journal that discusses issues of religion and public life.
The Supreme Court's ruling on Roe v. Wade in 1973 has created a society that endorses the large-scale killing of unborn children. The majority of the American public never supported—and still do not accept—-"liberalized" abortion laws; therefore, the radical pro-abortion regime created by Roe is a violation of the democratic principle of self-government. Moreover, abortion is a monumental act of social and moral injustice that is comparable to slavery.
Twenty-five years ago, on January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States, in what numerous constitutional scholars have called an act of raw judicial power, abolished the abortion laws of all fifty states. The news went out that the Court had settled the controversy over abortion. A generation later there is no more unsettled and unsettling question in American public life, and a settlement is nowhere in sight. For the next generation as well, it seems possible that abortion will be the bloody crossroads where conflicting visions of the kind of people we are and should be will do battle.
In an editorial following the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision of 1992, we wrote:
For years, some of us have been writing about the "culture wars" in which our society is embroiled. We are two nations: one concentrated on rights and laws, the other on rights and wrongs; one radically individualistic and dedicated to the actualized self, the other communal and invoking the common good; one viewing law as the instrument of the will to power and license, the other affirming an objective moral order reflected in a Constitution to which we are obliged; one given to private satisfaction, the other to familial responsibility; one...
View Full Essay