Jan. 22, 2007
Keeping The Pro-Life Movement Alive
National Review: On Roe's Anniversary, A Call To Keep Fighting
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Play CBS Video Video Roe V. Wade This Week In History: The Supreme Court legalized abortions with the Roe v. Wade ruling in January 22, 1973.
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Paige Manley, center, 13, of South Bend, Ind., braces against the wind Thursday, Jan. 22, 2004, as she marches with St. Joseph County Right to Life Inc., in front of the Federal Courthouse in South Bend. (AP)
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Interactive Abortion Debate It's one of the most hotly debated political and social issues in America. Review a history of that debate since the historic Roe v. Wade decision.
First they ignore you.This insightful observation of Mahatma Gandhi reveals a truth about social-reform movements — that it takes perseverance to achieve victory.
Then they ridicule you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
Ending the darkness of Roe v. Wade is not only possible, it is more than likely to occur if those who understand what's at stake don't give up, having tired of the seemingly long battle.
For, as social-reform movements go, the 34-year struggle to overturn Roe and its judicial progeny is still a relatively young one.
The lessons of the long struggle for black civil rights are instructive. From the advent of the first African slave being taken to the American colonies in 1619 to the beginning of the Civil War was a period of 246 years. The cause for life is, in comparison, only 34 years old.
The ratification of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in 1865 to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 was a period of approximately 100 years. We who fight for life having been laboring for only one third as long.
From the announcement in 1896 by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" public accommodations for blacks and whites was constitutional to the reversal of that decision by the same Supreme Court in 1954 in the Brown v. Board of Education case was a period of 58 years — almost a quarter of a century longer than our present struggle.
The period from the Civil Rights Amendment in 1964 to the present is approximately 42 years, eight years longer than we have presently struggled. The lesson is that American social-reform movements sometimes take time. We will win the battle to overturn Roe if we do not lose heart.
But as we maintain a long-term vision, we must also come to terms with today's brutal facts. The numbers are staggering and so, sometimes, is the temptation to despair. As we soberly mark the 34th anniversary of the judicial atrocity known as Roe v. Wade, the sheer number of innocent victims of that act of judicial tyranny overwhelms our everyday experience.
Even under the most conservative of estimates (and we lack certainty because we do not have a national, uniform mandatory abortion reporting requirement), somewhere between 40 million and 50 million unborn children have died under this nation's regime of abortion.
To put that number in some context, the best estimate is that the total war dead, of all causes, for all of America's major and minor wars since 1775 is 1,329,991 or an amount equal to just one year of Roe's infernal tally.
It is true that a prudent, incremental strategy of judicial, legislative, and public media efforts, including test cases, test legislation, and consistent public education, have led to noticeable gains in reducing the number of abortions and educating the public (and perhaps, soon, ending the legal support of partial-birth infanticide).
However, the relentless daily, monthly and annual toll of unborn lives lost, mothers and fathers physically and emotionally devastated, and cultural and political disunity of the country, leads many to wonder if the fight, after so many years of battling, is really winnable.
Can we honestly expect things to change when so many lives have been lost, so many families affected, so many legal battles and legislative arguments made and ignored, so much money spent and so many years of our lives gone by?
The answer is a resounding "yes." Positive signs are all around us.
The ever more detailed pictures of unborn babies in the womb manifest their humanity in ways that only the most hardened can deny. More young adults and high school students are pro-life than ever before. The accumulating weight of serious medical studies details the truth conclusively that abortion, in addition to killing her unborn child, is harmful to the woman who subjects herself to it.
On the legal front there are also hopeful signs. In addition to new principled justices, at no time in the last 34 years has the Supreme Court ever found a solid constitutional basis for the so-called "right to terminate a pregnancy."
Combine this with the equally revealing, albeit maddening, point that the Supreme Court conceded in the Casey decision 19 years after Roe — that no single constitutional argument standing alone could buttress the "right" to abort (i.e., without the added legal doctrine of stare decisis abortion jurisprudence is a house of cards) — and the overturning of Roe is inevitable.
Ultimately, the realization that the radical ideology behind the abortion industry is bankrupt morally, culturally, economically, and spiritually will lead to the collapse of the current abortion regime, just as surely as the deadly decay and false reality of Marxism led to the fall of the Soviet Union. All this is the good news if we just keep up the struggle.
By Nikolas T. Nikas
Reprinted with permission from National Review Online.

Michelle Obama tells how her role as the First Lady has changed her perspective.





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See all 53 CommentsThe effect of "abortion on demand" + "social democratic" taxation has made Western Europe into an older region unable to look forward and pay for the promises that they have made. As a result, they have allowed massive immigration from countries that THEY (not I) would deem "inferior" to pay the taxes. The results of this will be clear - a Germany that is not Germanic et al.
In America, take away the illegal and legal immigrants from the discussion and you would find that our hesitancy toward abortion has only kept our non-immigrant population near neutral. If wider adoption of abortion is allowed, why should we expect our country to avoid the pitfalls that Europe is already experiencing?
You said "Declining populations unable to support their own social programs, requiring a huge influx of foreign nationals to prop up the tax base, which leads to national instability because of the clash of cultures."
There have been clashes of cultures in every corner of the world since time began, whether or not abortions were occuring anywhere.
The U.S. population just topped 300,000,000. Where's the decline?
You didn't answer my question. Yes, it is very material as to whether the prenatal child killed by abortion is a living human being. Take your own words and substitute "fetus" for every other class of human beings who have been the victims of violent discrimination, "I do not believe X is a human being and I have a right to my belief."
Not when your belief seriously harms others and your belief is scientifically and logically wrong. What magic happened at your birth that turned you from a non-human "thing" into a human being? If you were not a living human being before you were born, tell me to which species you belonged! Admit the truth: abortion kills a living human being. The life of every human being is precious. All of us will die someday, but none of us should be deliberately killed.
So based on your assessment, you could argue that there is hypocrisy in wanting to kill an unborn child who has harmed no one, but not an enemy combatant who is willing to harm others?
Your view of hypocrisy can be factual, but it is not exclusively truthful.
Whether you believe abortion is a choice, or a right, or murder, look at the mess that open-abortion has created in Europe.
Declining populations unable to support their own social programs, requiring a huge influx of foreign nationals to prop up the tax base, which leads to national instability because of the clash of cultures.
I've witnessed this myself in Germany, Austria, Wales, England, etc.
Because it IS about choice. I know a lot of women who believe in choice, but wouldn't get an abortion for themselves. It is a decision htey make for themselves, but will not make it for others.
"Intentional murder of human beings is ugly, disgusting, nothing anyone would claim to support"
Well, 30% of this country currently supports it in Iraq. I'll bet a good percentage of that 30% also backs banning abortions, which is an ultimate hypocracy. How many innocent Iraqis have died due to the actions of people who, incidently, find abortion repugnant, yet support policies of war that kill innocents all the time?
Yes, I suspect most of the same anti-abortionists would also oppose our right to die at the time of our own choosing. They clearly are approaching this from a religious, "I know better than you do" position of moral crusading.
It is hard to see it as anything but a political arguement now.
"is abortion wrong or not, and should it be overturned?"
Overturning Roe vs. Wade will not stop abortions.
Neither will you. If you don't like abortions, don't have one, teach your kids not to have one.
Outside of that, its really not your business what another woman does with her pregnancy.
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