SHOW NOTES
Pro-Life, pt2
Leadership in Context with Keith Tucci
Episode 201
It is amazing to me to observe the liberals’ disconnect with history and lack of understanding of what Roe v. Wade is and was.
Abortion did not start in America when Roe v. Wade law was made in the Supreme Court in 1973. There were 7 states that completely outlawed abortion before 1973. There were about 6 states that had no restriction on abortion—which is what Roe v. Wade did.
What Roe v. Wade did was make abortion at any time, for any reason (or no reason at all), legal. It was the mother’s complete right. The child was treated as property.
Abortion controversy was happening long before Roe v. Wade, although not highly publicized. In most cases, abortion was not treated as birth control, as it is now. Historically, in no case was the life of the mother (like an ectopic pregnancy, for example) an issue. It has never been debated by any side of the debate. The most Pro-Life people do not debate the literal life of the mother. What Roe v. Wade did is say that it isn’t based on the life of the mother, but that the mother has the right to an abortion on demand if there are any circumstances of the mother that she determines doesn’t benefit her.
Roe v. Wade gave blanket authority for abortion for any reason or no reason at all to any state. The case went after the state of Texas because Texas was one of the states that had no abortion. They sued Texas under the 14th amendment. Wade was the state’s attorney. Wade’s defense was that the state had a vested right and responsibility to protect pregnancy. If you read the transcripts from Roe v. Wade, Wade was woefully weak, underprepared, and undereducated.
The 14th amendment was enacted after the Civil War by a Republican senate. It was the amendment that gave “due process under the law.” African Americans were not getting due process. They were being treated differently. The Republican Congress amended the Constitution to make it painfully clear that everyone in the United States was entitled to due process. They went as far as to say that even non-citizens are entitled to due process. Anyone on our soil has to be treated a certain way and has access to the courts.
If you read the 14th amendment, you can’t come up with anything that gives a right to an abortion. What the court did in Roe v. Wade is create the right to privacy, which doesn’t appear in the amendment. The court found that there is a suggested right to privacy and there was a penumbra of understanding that this could include abortion. A penumbra is a shadow of something. The right of privacy suggests that this is the woman’s private issue because the child is in her body right now.
The truth is that this was a bad law from Day 1, and everyone knew it. Most legal scholars, even liberal ones, understood that some day, at some point, you would have a court that would interpret the Constitution accurately and that Roe v. Wade would fall because there was no merit to it. It was very much a political decision.
If Roe v. Wade were brought before a court today, there would be a completely different argument. We understand childhood development in the womb way greater than we did then. Wade didn’t argue the personhood of the baby or being able to survive outside the mother’s womb at a certain age. We currently have a baby connected to our network that was born weighing only 1lb 13oz. He is surviving with medical assistance right now by the grace of God.
The argument was that the state has a vested interest. Here’s what that looks like: There are laws that make you put your child in a car seat. The state says they have a vested interest in keeping that child safe and they are going to make rules to tell you how to do it. The state says they have a vested interest in your child being educated, and therefore, they have laws about education. The state says they have a vested interest in your child being healthy; they will prosecute parents who don’t get their children necessary medical treatment.
What the overturning of Roe v. Wade has done is to turn it back over to the states. The states now have a vested interest in this child because this unborn child is a person. You can’t have a vested interest outside the womb if you don’t have a vested interest inside the womb. It’s the same child.
We have to understand what Roe v. Wade is and what it did. When people talk about it, most of them have very little understanding. Today, we are just talking about law. Roe v. Wade was a really bad law. It was a decision that should have never passed. Having the information we have today, it would never have passed, even in a liberal court. We have to put this argument in the proper context.
As citizens in our states, we have to say we want to protect children inside the womb, just like the state protects them outside the womb.
Join us next week as Keith Tucci continues to put leadership truth in the context of the local church. And as always, please like, share, rate/review, and invite others to listen. See you next week!
