The Abortion Legacy
41 years later, this debate rages on.
I distinctly remember the day. It was a sunny Saturday and my whole family was piled in the car and we were on our way to church services. I was 12 and the conversation my parents were having was not making sense to me. My dad especially was very agitated as he talked about the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision making abortions legal for any reason.
The justification the Court gave was (as it came to be summarized) that a woman had the right to choose to keep or terminate a pregnancy since it was her body. Specifically, the Court ruled that “a pregnant woman is entitled to have an abortion until the end of the first trimester of pregnancy without any interference by the state.” The abortion debate here in the U.S.A. has raged unabated in the 41 years since.
Some History
Let’s review some history of this landmark ruling. The case the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on January 22, 1973 was Roe v. Wade, in which the Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute that made abortion illegal except where the life of the mother was in danger. The way the court system works in the United States is that when the Supreme Court rules on a case it overrides any local or state laws.
The “Roe” is the case was a woman named Norma McCorvey who filed the appeal in federal district court under the name of Jane Roe to maintain her anonymity. She filed the appeal because she was 23, divorced once already, unmarried, pregnant for the fourth time, out of work and was seeking an abortion (which was still illegal at the time in the state of Texas).
In filing the brief, she asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Texas abortion law on the grounds that to prevent her from having an abortion the law violated her constitutional right to privacy. The Court agreed with her but not without its own controversy. The ruling came too late for McCorvey to have a legal abortion so she gave her daughter up for adoption, as she had done with her previous children.
Norma McCorvey maintained her anonymity for years after the Court ruling (and never participated in the original case except to file the brief), but in 1989 she allied herself directly with the abortion rights movement. She became the face of the abortion rights movement – both for those who wished to have, and for those who hated this procedure. In August of 1995 McCorvey publicly repudiated her stance on abortion and allied herself with the pro-life movement in this debate, but the floodgates had too long been open.
What is the legacy of legalized abortion?
Here in the U.S., since 1973 until 2008 (the last reliable numbers available), there have been approximately 820 million legal abortions performed. To put this in context, the current population of the U.S. is about 318 million – which means that more than two and a half times the current U.S. population has been killed before they had a chance to draw a breath.
Most of the legal abortions in this country are from unwed mothers – about 85%. Of that number more than 55% are from women who have never had an abortion before, 36% are from women who have had at least one abortion previously and 8% were from women who had had three or more prior abortions (statistics from the Centers for Disease Control).
Only a very small fraction of these abortions are done because of rape, a health risk to the mother or other health reasons – which mean the overwhelming majority of abortions are performed as a form of birth control.
As a vertical thinker, you must consider this topic differently than the currently accepted view. Abortion is murder which Exodus 20:13 prohibits: “You shall not murder.”
No pregnancy should be seen as an inconvenience or that new life is just a mass of cells with no life. Left uninterrupted, a pregnancy ends in a new life and life is precious to God. God designed the family, and the proper order is marriage and then children as they can be provided for in that context.
The legacy of legalized abortion is not one of life. It is a legacy of lost lives and broken relationships. If you have had an abortion, repentance can be sought just the same as any other sin. But abortion is a permanent solution to a temporary “problem,” and one many women regret for the rest of their lives. If you find yourself in a situation where you are contemplating abortion, please seek counseling to understand your options that do not violate God’s Word.
The United Church of God, the parent organization of Vertical Thought, has published a great deal on this topic. Here are some links to other articles on this subject for further reading:
- Teen Bible Study Guide: Abortion
- Is Abortion the Answer to Unwanted Pregnancy?
- The Abortion Debate: What Does God Say?
