12 Pro-Life Truths To Counter Every Abortion Myth
The Supreme Court may soon overturn Roe v. Wade. The truth that abortion is wrong is increasingly winning out.
By Eleanor Bartow
October 11, 2021
The divisive national debate about abortion is in the news as much as ever. Texas’ new ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy was blocked by a judge on Wednesday but allowed to continue on Friday, Democrats’ huge spending bill is in part being held up by an amendment allowing federal funding of abortion, and, in what will be the most-watched case in decades, the Supreme Court may overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling later this year.
The Roe ruling highlighted the greatest logical flaw in support for abortion: for abortion to be illegal at some point before birth (and even most pro-choice Americans agree it should be illegal in the very late stages), you have to pick that point in time. But when?
With Roe, the Supreme Court first took a trimester approach to when abortion should be permitted. As the Roe opinion was drafted, the justices disagreed on the stage at which abortion should be regulated, even changing that point from the end of the first trimester to the end of the second.
In its final form, Roe forbade virtually all abortion regulation in the first trimester, allowed regulation only if serving the mother’s health in the second, and banned prohibition in the third trimester when a mother’s “health” was a consideration. The latter was broadly defined in the companion case Doe v. Bolton to include “emotional, psychological,” and family health, thus effectively allowing all abortions.
The justice who wrote the majority opinion in Roe, Harry Blackmun, even wrote in a memo to his colleagues that Roe’s use of trimesters was “arbitrary … but perhaps any other selected point, such as quickening or viability (of the fetus), is equally arbitrary.” In Roe, the court did not resolve the question of when life begins but ruled that a fetus did not qualify as a “person” as used in the Constitution.
Later, the Supreme Court abandoned the arbitrary trimester framework in favor of another “arbitrary” and “selected point” Blackmun had identified in that memo. In its 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruling, the court barred “undue burdens” on abortion before fetal viability.
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https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/11/12-pro-life-truths-to-counter-every-abortion-myth/
