No

by Crystal Lake

Created on: August 10, 2007

There are many reasons why the Roe v. Wade decision was tragically unjust. It relates to how the decision came about, the lack of partiality on the part of one of the Justices, and the resultant death toll from a procedure which should never have been legalized.

Upon reading the Roe v. Wade decision, especially the words of Justice Blackmun, one finds a lot of references to ancient history, the common law, Christian theology, and there is even a reference to Plato - who also in the voice of Socrates commended infanticide and modelled a form of government in his "Republic" involving social engineering and an antidemocratic rule by philosopher kings. One is left wondering how this is at all relevant to Constitutional interpretation and whether we should even take such examples into consideration. The Justice, though, tries to explain this irrelevancy by saying it "perhaps is not generally appreciated that the restrictive criminal abortion laws in effect in a majority of States today are of relatively recent vintage." However recent the "vintage", it is still irrelevant as to whether abortion laws violate the Constitution.

When Blackmun does get into the Constitution, he argues that since abortion was never treated as the same crime as a full murder, it is doubtful whether the writers and signers of the Constitution included fetuses as persons. On the surface, this looks like good reasoning, and is an adequate argument for including a life amendment in the Constitution. Unfortunately, these same individuals involved in the Constituion lived in a time when there were still criminal penalties for abortions in various states, and so it can also be argued that they never intended for abortion to be an absolute right during any stage of pregnancy, either.

There is also this mysterious right of privacy that is never really expressed in the Constitution but inferred from such passages as the portion about unwarranted searches and seizures. Yet, there is something wrong with such judgments. If privacy was so important in and of itself, why wasn't this spelled out in the Bill of Rights? Ideally, I support a right to privacy for everyone from government intrusion, but at the same time I struggle with the notion of where exactly that right is delineated. Necessarily, there would be much debate as to what exactly constitutes "privacy", and yet we have silence on this regard. No, it isn't valid to argue for rights that aren't in the Constitution, regardless of what case law we can use to back it up.

It is for these reasons and more that this decision should be thrown out as an injustice and here is another doozy! There is also the extreme partiality of Justice Blackmun himself, and it is no rumour brought up from the oh so nefarious and perfidious voices of the anti-abortion wingnuts or wingbats or whatever(smell the sarcasm in the last part of that sentence!). It comes straight from the lips of his own daughter, abortion supporter, Sally Blackmun, who had in her own life in the years before Roe v. Wade, dealt with an untimely pregnancy that she regrets. She said:

"Roe was a case that Dad struggled with. It was a case that he asked his daughters' and wife's opinion about."*

It's not only inappropriate and unprofessional for a judge to ask his family's opinion about a case, but also has little relevance to its constitutionality and reveals a lot of how one's emotions and experiences can cloud judgment. Even Planned Parenthood references the "daughter effect" pointing out Sally Blackmun and her father:

"Justice Blackmun himself had the courage to take women's experience into account...Sally Blackmun's experience was particularly relevant. Devastated to find herself pregnant in 1966, the 19-year-old quit college and married her boyfriend "a decision that I might have made differently, had Roe v. Wade been around." Three weeks after the wedding, she miscarried."*

It is as just to take into account women's experiences on pregnancy with regards to abortion as it is to take into account women's experiences on parenthood and desperation about infanticide. Quite frankly, when we are asking ourselves whether abortion is an absolute right that must be protected for the sake of pregnant women, we must take into account the Constitution and whether the abortion act is inherently an act of murder. Everyone who commits a crime always has some reason for it, it doesn't mean their reasons should be taken into account in deciding a case.

Now, we go to the nature of the act itself. While it can be argued that the Constitution does not absolutely forbid abortion, when considering the injustice of an act on its own it is obvious that it is by nature an unjust act. Reproductive biology is quite clear that a new human individual is created at the point when the genetic material of the gametes fuse, because at that point does it become a new and separate organism that grows and develops into an adult. Justice demands that parents look after all their offspring, not just the ones that were born. This is just because it is the parents that put that child in the condition of dependency and vulnerability. The child did not will itself into existence inside the mother. The mother, in most cases, decided to have sex and whether intentionally or not brought the youngster into the world. She has a responsibility (as does the father). If we support laws against post-natal child neglect and abuse, it is logical that we should support laws against another form of child abuse - abortion. The death toll alone is staggering..on the order of millions since it was legalized. A government should protect people against such slaughter. That is the right thing. That is the moral thing. That is the just thing. That should be the legal thing. Just because you own your body doesn't mean you have a right to do with it whatever you wish, or else there would be anarchy and not a system of laws protecting us from aggression.

Those who support Roe v. Wade have no leg to stand on constitutionally and Roe v. Wade is grossly inconsistent with the American ideal of the rights to life, liberty, and property.

*Sources: http://www.womensene ws.org/article.cfm/d yn/aid/1732/context/ cover/

http://www.plannedpa renthood.org/news-ar ticles-press/politic s-policy-issues/publ ic-affairs/personal- politics-6222.htm

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