It’s Past Time for the Supreme Court to Overturn Roe v. Wade

Opinion   |   Allan E. Parker   |   Dec 28, 2012   |   11:53AM   |   Washington, DC

The Supreme Court decisions in Roe and Doe are still deeply divisive and have not been accepted by a deep consensus of the American people because they allow the killing of millions of children in the womb. Because the issue is one of life and death, it will not go away until either the Supreme Court or the American people through a constitutional amendment get it right. Abortion is such a grave and immoral injustice, on such a massive scale, that it can never be accepted completely by the American people.

Every nomination to the Supreme Court becomes an intense, critical, national battle as each faction strives to get its champion appointed to the Court.

America’s failure to uniformly accept the legitimacy of abortion is further reflected in every presidential battle, including this last one in which abortion was a deeply contentious issue.

In 1992, the Supreme Court’s decision in Casey v. Planned Parenthood was supposed to be the compromise that put the abortion controversy to rest once and for all. The Court tried to adopt a middle ground, yet two decades later, the controversy has not gone away. Casey has been called the worst constitutional decision of all times by some.

We call upon the U.S. Supreme Court to fix the problem that it created when it denied personhood to children in the womb in Roe and Doe. It took a civil war to reverse Dred Scott. It might take another civil war if Americans are forced to pay for abortions or are compelled to undergo abortions as in China.

While giving due respect to the institution of the Supreme Court, it does not always get right the question of “who is a human being entitled to equal protection under the law?” In the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court held that slaves were property. The Court said,

“The only two clauses in the Constitution which point to this race, treat them as persons whom it was morally lawful to deal in as articles of property and to hold as slaves.”

The Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions held that children can be killed in the womb because they are not persons. Roe and Doe are egregious mistakes by the Supreme Court, which the Supreme Court should correct.

In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court made another mistake on equal human rights when it failed to give equal rights under law to African Americans who have been finally freed from Dred Scott’s slavery. This led to oppressive and unjust segregation. Just as the Supreme Court in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education corrected the problems it created in Plessy v. Ferguson, we urge the court to reverse Roe and Doe. In 1954, the Supreme Court reversed Plessy v. Ferguson and followed the actual language of the Constitution, correcting the segregation problem that the Court itself created in 1896 when it bowed to political pressure and held that separate but equal was equal.

If abortion were truly a right granted by the Constitution, like women’s right to vote, then it could not be changed by five judges of the Supreme Court. Roe and Doe can be corrected by five members of the Court and we urge them to do so in 2013.

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During the year 2013, we call on the United States Supreme Court to reverse Roe and Doe. This is the only way for the American people to come to a consensus about the issue of life through the political process.

Forty years is too long. It is time for the Supreme Court to reverse its own mistake.

LifeNews Note: Allan Parker is President of The Justice Foundation