Part one in a two-part series on how America was affected by the infamous Supreme Court decision concerning abortion, and what is being done to return America to a culture of life.
In 1976, three years after the U.S. Supreme Court passed Roe v. Wade, Francis Schaeffer predicted where the acceptance of abortion would take American society. More importantly he knew the root of problem.
In his book How Should We Then Live, the 20th Century's foremost Christian philosopher explained that when America's legal system rejected the idea of moral absolutes, arbitrary consensus became the new basis of law. This being the case, it's not hard to see that law is embracing many heinous things, including not only the removal of legal protection from the unborn, said Schaeffer, but also euthanasia, infanticide and harvesting body parts from those who are brain dead.
Now that America is 30 years down the road from the Roe v. Wade decision, we can better see how Schaeffer was right. Abortion's negative impact on American culture is obvious.
Abortion Since 1973
In 30 years, over 40 million infants have lost their lives at the behest of their mothers. Abortion's high tide was reached in 1980 and 1981 when the rate was 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44. According to a survey released last week by Planned Parenthood's Alan Guttmacher Institute, the rate of abortion has now reached its lowest point in 29 years. In 2000, the number of women who had abortions was 21.3 for every 1,000 women.
While the slowing trend is good news to the pro-life community, the cumulative number of abortions since 1973 weighs heavily. In 14 metropolitan areas of the United States, there are more babies aborted than there are live births. The National Right to Life Committee reports that partial birth abortions have tripled since 1996 to at least 2,200 performed in 2000.
Abortion, Feminism and Roe
The Supreme Court passed Roe v. Wade during the culmination of a rising influence of the women's rights movement and the abandoning of moral absolutes in American law. Surprisingly, however, the support for abortion at the time was not widespread. Hadley Arkes, Professor of Jurisprudence and American Institutions at Amherst College says, "In the early days after Roe v. Wade ... we never expected it would last as long as it has. With the sentiment in Congress and the (public's) reaction at the time, we really expected that this thing would be overturned with a constitutional amendment."
It wasn't. Now this fatal choice is considered a right, indeed an "entitlement." Indeed, feminists would have society believe that this ultimate act of selfishness is actually part of the Constitution. In the book, Feminism: Mystique or Mistake, author Diane Passno says, "The secular feminist agenda thrives in a postmodern culture, since the movement is basically selfish or self-centered in nature. It's all about women and what they want, and has nothing to do with what is healthy for all members of the culture..."
The feminist ideology that backed the push for legalized abortion has indoctrinated our society with the image of women as powerful. And yet, the exact opposite is true in the case of a woman who wants abortion. Passno writes, "If feminists want women to be perceived as masters of their own destiny, then why are irresponsibility and lack of self-control the reasons behind most elective abortions?" In pregnancy (except for the miniscule number of pregnancies caused by rape), a woman has contributed to her predicament by accepting a sexual proposition. Society is expected to pity her because her recreation resulted in an ironic twist of feminism.
Roe gave women a rallying point to claim equality with men on issues related to childbirth. For thousands of years a man could physically walk away from a pregnancy with little outside consequence. Now for the first time women could seemingly walk away from that unwanted pregnancy as well.
