ROE V. WADE & DOE V. BOLTON

It began in 1973, the Supreme Court handed down two major decisions, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. Roe v. Wade legalized abortion with restrictions unless the life or health of the mother was at stake. Doe v. Bolton defined health so broadly (all factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to the well-being of the patient) it made abortion legal for any reason, and at any time, from the single-cell zygote up to and including the fully formed partial-birth abortion. These two decisions, together, were the death sentence for preborn American citizens. The full brutality of abortion-on-demand is exposed when we understand that Doe stripped Roe of its restrictions. Sadly, some pro-life leaders are still not alert to the need to conceptually bind Doe to Roe. Yet, abortion advocates see the benefit of keeping Doe out of the debate; they know that it will divulge the full force and effect of Roe and Doe together.

The Supreme Court went even further in its defiance of common sense when it said, “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.” This evasion of reality made it easier for society to swallow the abortion horror. A woman could now have someone destroy the zygote/embryo/fetus growing in her womb. This abhorrent devastation of innocent human life was so outrageous and so alarming that by 1978, I was spending my free time as a pro-life activist writer. My goal was to defend the weakest member of our human family in his or her earliest stage of life—in utero. Common sense tells me that the promise of our Declaration of Independence must include every living member of the human family, regardless of size. If it did not, we have no moral right to the freedom we all cherish for ourselves.