Just two months ago, Americans got a taste of how shocking the Roe v. Wade decision was 35 years ago when the California Supreme Court struck down California's law defining marriage as between one man and one woman that was passed, even in California, with overwhelming support.
That act of raw judicial power in California was similar to the way the United State's Supreme Court struck down abortion laws in all 50 states in its notorious Roe v. Wade decision.
Abortion advocates have spread the myth that the Court was just following popular opinion and public sentiment when it handed down Roe. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Pro-life senior statesman Dr. John Wilke MD, notes that there was a flurry of legislative activity regarding abortion in state legislatures before and while Roe was being heard and ahead of Roe's decision in January, 1973. There were huge elections over abortion in 1972 in places like New York. If the Court was expecting to follow public opinion, they would have awakened in shock the day after those elections.
Wilke says that in April of 1972 New York legislators overturned New York's permissive abortion law. But it was vetoed by Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller. In the November elections, so many abortion supporting New York legislators were thrown out of office in New York-ground zero of the abortion movement-that the legislature had the votes to override Rockefeller's veto.
Wilke also says that after Colorado and California legalized abortion in 1967, 17 states had laws permitting abortion. Only four states had liberal abortion laws, twelve had laws generally restricting abortion to rape, incest, life of the mother and severe fetal deformities of the unborn. Florida was forced by court order to permit abortion. Thirty-three other state legislatures debated abortion, but rejected it. Referendums in Michigan and N. Dakota were defeated.
The tide was turning against abortion, not toward it, when the court stepped in. (Abortion, Questions and Answers, Love Them Both, Revised, pp. 33-35)
It's easy to see how shocking Roe was in 1973. It was as shocking as yesterday's decision which over turned an initiative voted on by Californians only eight years earlier, just as Roe invalidated abortion laws across America passed by their elected officials
That's why the 2008 presidential election is so critical to our cause and other causes. The courts are out of control and are anti- life and anti-family. The next president will pack the lower courts and make nominations to vacancies in the Supreme Court. With the two oldest justices being fervent abortion supporters, the next president will impact another generation of abortion in America.
Pro-lifers have clear choices for President in 2008. Senator Barrack Obama supports abortion on demand. He is supported by the leading abortion organizations and even opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act when he was an Illinois state legislator. Not even NARAL Pro Choice America was willing to oppose that. But Obama did. Obama has promised to appoint justices who will uphold abortion.
Senator John McCain is pro-life, has a consistent pro-life voting record on abortion and has promised to appoint justices like Justices Thomas, Scalia, Roberts and Alito.
The stakes are high and getting higher with each election. We are one justice away from the overturn or severe limitation of Roe. Or we are one president away from another series of bad judicial appointments and decades more of waking up to more shocking Supreme Court decisions.
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