Death Roe

The BBC, CNN and other news outlets are struggling to maintain a pretence of impartiality in their coverage of the US Supreme Court’s reversal of the 1973 ruling which forbade states and federal authorities from preventing infanticide. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) decreed this on the grounds of the woman’s constitutional right to privacy, even where a majority of the electorate objected to the practice. A minority of the nine Justices, Byron White and William Rehnquist, dissented from the majority opinion, and publicly rejected the orginal ruling.

This week, a majority of justices, in part thanks to Donald Trump’s appointment of conservatives to the Court, reversed the decision. Many in the US and around the world are bewailing this 'attack' upon women, though the Court’s ruling stated that "the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives." In other words, it is for politicians and the people who elect them to determine abortion rights, not unelected judges. This sounds wonderfully democratic, a fact that seems to be lost on the BBC and other dismayed critics of the Court. Liberal states like New York and California are likely to be unaffected by the ruling, cheerfully maintaining their infanticide programmes, whereas conservative states in the South and West are now free to protect their babies’ lives. Even if one is not pro-life, one surely has to acknowledge the logic of the Court.

One interesting development among American ‘liberals’ is their rediscovery of the word ‘woman’, a famously complicated term many struggled to define over the past few years. The Court’s decision has reinvigorated the Left’s familiarity with biology and dictionary usage- knowledge and skills which are usually found wanting.

Those of us who value life receive precious little by way of encouragement. This week, we did. May God bless America.