Editorial

A victory for pro-lifers

For almost 50 years, American women have had the legal right to kill their own unborn children. That began in 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion.

Now it appears that things may be changing as more and more states are putting restrictions on when women can have abortions. The Supreme Court, with a 5-4 ruling on Sept. 1, declined to overturn a Texas law that bans abortion after the baby’s heart is beating, or about at six weeks of pregnancy. Naturally, the pro-abortion forces are livid about that.

Pro-life people are jubilant because they believe that the court’s decision could lead to a future decision to reverse Roe v. Wade. That would not make all abortions illegal, but it would allow states to pass more restrictive laws, which some have already started to do.

The move toward the court’s decision has been going on for several years, including during the presidential campaign of 2016 between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. You probably remember how difficult it was for pro-life people to vote, especially because of Trump’s views when it came to immigration policy—recall that he wanted to forbid immigrants from certain countries—and Clinton’s uncompromising support of abortion rights.

But then Trump promised to appoint pro-life justices and judges, and that was enough for many in the pro-life movement. Call many of those people “one-issue voters” if you want, but they believed that no other issue could be as important as ending abortion.

Trump won the election and had the opportunity to nominate three justices to the Supreme Court—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett—plus 44 circuit court judges. Those three Supreme Court justices all voted to allow the Texas law to stand; they were joined by justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

The court’s decision on the Texas law, therefore, is a great victory for the pro-life movement, just as the Roe v. Wade decision was a great victory for the pro-abortion movement nearly half a century ago.

Whether or not the Supreme Court will next reverse Roe v. Wade, it seems clear that the abortion battles are now going to be in the states. So yes, unfortunately, whether or not abortion is legal or illegal is now a political matter and it will depend on which party controls a state’s legislature.

What the pro-life movement should be doing, though, and has been trying to do all along, is convincing people that abortion is immoral. It is, whether pro-abortion proponents admit it or not, exactly what the first sentence in this editorial says it is: the killing of women’s own unborn children.

Biologists have always taught that a new human being is created when a man’s sperm penetrates a woman’s ovum. It is not part of the woman’s body, as so many signs say it is; it is a separate human person that should be protected, not destroyed.

Many women have come to realize that fact when they have a sonogram, many often out of curiosity about the sex of the baby. It’s impossible to know how many women have changed their minds about having an abortion after seeing the images of their children in this way, but we believe that the number is high.

However, for many women, the issue isn’t whether or not it’s a baby, or when it becomes another human being, but simply the mother’s right to choose whether or not to have the baby. For the past 50 years, they have been taught that it’s the mother’s right to choose. The baby’s right to life has been denied.

Such a thing should be abhorrent, and we believe that members of the youngest generations are coming to realize that. There is evidence that young people tend to be pro-life. But that’s difficult in a society in which the “right” to abortion has been taken for granted for so long.

What will happen here in Indiana, which is recognized by many as a pro-life state? The legislature has passed some laws that restrict abortion practices, but not to the extent that the Texas law has. Our legislators won’t do anything more this calendar year, but if abortion is on their agenda next year, you can expect a battle with the pro-abortion forces.

—John F. Fink