Guest Opinion: The fact of human life is Roe v Wade's biggest threat
Every argument in favor of abortion in the recent (Feb. 4) op-ed written by Planned Parenthood Keystone’s president and CEO can be made moot by acknowledging one simple scientific fact: Abortion kills a living human being.
The majority opinion in Roe v. Wade sidestepped the issue of when life begins by saying: “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”
Anyone with an ounce of common sense knew then, and knows now, that living beings do not come from some inanimate substance that mysteriously becomes alive. The paragraph cited above is just one example of the multiple intellectual gymnastics the court went through to fabricate law, not interpret The Constitution. It is especially disconcerting that current progressives still pretend that even something with a heartbeat is not living.
The author also makes a gross assumption that overturning Roe will also expand into a broader reversal of the “right to privacy,” which Roe recognizes is not explicitly mentioned in The Constitution. However, this is a tenuous leap because as Roe’s majority again states:
“[The] Court's decisions recognizing a right of privacy also acknowledge that some state regulation in areas protected by that right is appropriate. …a State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision.”
Roe continues, “The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. In fact, it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one's body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court's decisions. The Court has refused to recognize an unlimited right of this kind in the past….We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified, and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.”
Thus, there is little reason for the court to touch the legal fiction of the right to privacy because Roe recognizes that our communal interest in protecting “potential life” has always overridden that principle.
Moreover, the “important state interest” of “protecting potential life” is Roe’s weakest point because “potential life” is yet another absurd invention of the court. Per Roe, the unborn are “potentially alive” when they can survive outside the womb, a point called viability, which Roe set at 24- to 28-weeks' gestation.
Nevertheless, a baby now 20 months old was born at 19 weeks. If not yet born, that living baby could have been terminated for another six weeks. Viability is not a measure of “being alive.” It is a measure of technological capabilities.
It also is an absurd argument to claim something is not alive because it cannot exist outside of its natural environment. That applies to every living organism including human adults. Science and common sense tell us that unborn human beings are not merely “potential life,” but actual life from the moment of fertilization.
Pregnancy is not a disease. Thus, abortion is not health care. Any civil society must recognize that “freedom of choice” does not include the freedom to do evil. And there is nothing more evil than the killing of an innocent human being.
Plumstead resident Charles D. Dern holds a Ph.D. and is an instructor in philosophy and medical ethics.
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Guest Opinion: The fact of human life is Roe v Wade's biggest threat
