Roe v Wade versus Common Sense and Morality

January 22, 2011, marks the 38th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe versus Wade. This ruling was based on the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, an amendment that was added nearly 100 years earlier to guarantee a right to privacy in contracts. The Court decided that contract privacy extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, a contract she makes with a doctor. The right to an abortion is granted up to the time of viability, the time at which a baby can live outside the womb.

Ironically, this same 14th Amendment says, "...nor shall any State deprive any person of life..." All the legalese is ridiculous since everyone who is honest with himself knows that the baby is already a person. Even without the issues of morality and legal rights, science has shown that a baby in the womb can feel pain, cry, and respond to stimuli long before the usual age of viability, 28 week or seven months into the pregnancy.

Common sense is all we need to determine that abortion is murder. But if common sense does not prevail, we can look to God's Word for the answer. Psalm 139:13-14 says: "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, your works are wonderful, I know that full well." (NIV)

God said He decided to make Jeremiah a prophet before he was even born: "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." Jeremiah 1:5

When Jesus' mother Mary entered the home of Elisabeth and greeted her, the baby John the Baptist responded to her voice: " As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy." Luke 1:44

My heart goes out to young women who are pregnant and alone. Still, I cannot fathom anything worse than the guilt a mother must feel knowing she has participated in killing her own child. I have read that this guilt plagues her for her entire life and is relived yearly on that date.

The recent news of the abortionist in Philadelphia charged with Infanticide - murdering eight babies who lived through his grisly acts - should remind us that every abortion, legal or illegal, is murder. This doctor and others like him have killed more than 35 million babies since Roe v Wade became the law of the land. May God have mercy on a nation that throws our children away like so much medical waste.

Abraham Lincoln said, "Nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on...by its fellows." Who among us would be arrogant enough to set him/herself up to decide who should live and who is unworthy of life?

That's what I think...what do you think?