The Anniversary of Roe v. Wade

Apparently today is the anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade.

Although in the past I have taken the view that it is imprudent for the state to ban abortion, I have long believed that the Roe decision was poorly reasoned and politically disastrous. I began a series of posts on Roe, but sad to say haven't brought the analysis up to the Roe ruling itself and the equally important Webster case.

In my view, issues of this kind should be resolved through the constitutional political system, by the legislative process (or in some states, the initiative, which is fraught with other difficulties). When unelected, or even nominally elected judges, use legal reasoning that's impenetrable to the mind of the average citizen, to impose their views on highly charged subjects such as abortion, the political process is thwarted, the losers feel cheated and put upon, and the legitimacy of the system suffers.

Before Roe, the country was drifting in the direction of a less restrictive approach to abortion, and if Roe is overruled, the political process will resume. In some states, such as California, which has placed a "right of privacy" in its Constitution, a permissive approach to the issue will prevail; in others, more conservative, some degree of restriction is likely to be enacted. Even supposedly conservative South Dakota refused, this last election, to enact an absolute abortion ban with no exception for rape or incest.

I've also grown increasingly uncomfortable with the cultural consequences of a relaxed approach to abortion. I remember the sorrow when my wife miscarried, before our first child was born healthy. As potential viability becomes possible earlier in a pregnancy, late-term abortion becomes more and more akin to infanticide. Looking at the results of sex-selection abortions in Asia (millions of men who will be unable to marry, because the babies who would have grown up to be their wives were aborted, among other things), the creepily casual way in which technology is used and misused in reproductive matters, and other changes, few of them good, in the culture, I am increasingly troubled. In addition, rather than overpopulation, the developed world appears to be facing rapid population decline, as well as a decline in family life.

It appears to me more and more that we, and I in particular, have gone astray in these matters and the easy acceptance of abortion looks to be one of the reasons. There is much to answer for.