By Jerry Newcombe, D.Min.,
The Declaration of Independence says we’re endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
When Vice President Kamala Harris gave a speech promoting abortion over the weekend, she cited our nation’s founding document, and the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But she conveniently left out the right to life—even though that is the first right listed. She also left out the Creator—the source of all our rights.
This is just one example among many of the ways that 50 years of the abortion ethic have undermined our right to life as a nation.
January 22, 2023 was the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the infamous Supreme Court decision that gave us abortion on demand. Here are just a few examples of some of the fallout of that decision.
Undermining the Constitution
Roe v. Wade abused the Constitution by claiming that somehow the 9th and the 14th Amendments could be so twisted as to allow for abortion on demand. Huh? The 14th Amendment even mentions the “right to life.”
The Supreme Court has made mistakes through the years. In 1857, they said in the infamous Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, “The Constitution of the United States recognizes slaves as property.”
We fought a Civil War and saw about 700,000 American die in part to correct that dreadful decision. But Roe has also damaged our governance as a nation under the Constitution.
Father Frank Pavone, founder and director of Priests for Life, who was recently “laicized” by an increasingly liberal Vatican, told me: “Roe v. Wade has distorted our entire process of self-governance, replacing the will of the people with the imposition of a fake Constitutional right, and allowing abortion, as the only medical procedure with such a status, to grotesquely disfigure everything from city council meetings to Supreme Court confirmation processes.”
Degrading Human Life
We were told before Roe that if abortion were legal, then every child would be wanted and therefore child abuse would go down.
But child abuse has skyrocketed since Roe. And why not? It deadens the maternal instinct. As Mother Teresa once observed, “If we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell others not to kill one another?”
Since Roe was overturned, we have seen an acceleration of chemical abortions. Many of these are done by the women themselves in their own homes without the benefit of a physician to observe.
Abby Johnson, former head of a Planned Parenthood clinic and one-time “Planned Parenthood Employee of the Year,” is strongly pro-life today because she saw a sonogram of an abortion in her own clinic. This wasn’t a “blob of tissue” fighting for his life—it was a baby. Her story can be found in the book she wrote with Cindy Lambert, Unplanned, and the subsequent movie.
She gave me a statement for this article on 50 years of legalized abortion in America: “One of the biggest fallouts from Roe is that every woman’s bathroom will now become an abortion clinic if she decides to use the abortion pill to end her unwanted or unplanned pregnancy.”
These pills are marketed as safe. But she warns, “The use of the abortion pill is about to skyrocket and I don’t think the nation is ready for both emotional and physical ramifications of such sweeping actions. I think it’s going to be horrific, and the pro-life movement needs to be there for these women who need love the most when they are considering abortion and in the aftermath of their decision.”
Abortion has undermined the Hippocratic Oath, more than 2000 years old in Western medicine—that physicians are to “do no harm”—since abortionists are actively taking a life.
Eric Scheidler is the founder of the Pro-Life Action League. He told me, “[A]fter two generations of abortion without limits, one of the most extreme policies on the face of the Earth, we have a scene of devastation on our hands.”
64 Million Unborn Babies Dead
Millions of mothers have participated in the destruction of their own preborn babies. Some have been hardened in their hearts by the process. Others have felt terrible regret.
“Abortion is bad for women and babies,” notes Evangelist Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She admits she had two abortions—and now is so grateful for the forgiveness of Jesus in her life. She warns against others making this same mistake.
In fact, she told me in a recent radio segment, “Life should be celebrated and acknowledged and appreciated from the womb to the tomb into eternity.” Alveda has now started the organization, “Speak for Life.”
50 years ago, the Supreme Court took a terribly wrong turn in Roe. Thankfully, that has been overturned, but we have much ground to cover in America to see a resurgence of the right to life.
###
Jerry Newcombe, D.Min., is the executive director of the Providence Forum, an outreach of D. James Kennedy Ministries, where Jerry also serves as senior producer and an on-air contributor.
He is also the author or co-author of 33 books.
