Letter to the Editors: Reversing Roe

Elizabeth Madden

After 58 years of challenges, on May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court declared racial segregation unconstitutional. More than 126 years later, on June 24, 2022 another human rights abuse was corrected when the current Court determined “The U.S. Constitution does not confer a right to abortion”. 

Both Plessy and Roe reversed precedent legitimately because later Supreme Courts found both cases wrongly decided. The right to regulate abortion was returned to states where it began. By a two to one margin, polls show Americans want elected officials to set abortion policy, not unelected judges. 

Women should have choices and control over their bodies while realizing many functions produce their own effects. Take disease for instance. Or sex encounters with the possibility of creating separate human beings.  

Abortion is not health care. Out of 100 women who had abortions, 35 were treated in ER for complications. A 2015 review of multiple studies linked surgical abortions with later premature births. In younger women, stretching the cervix to perform abortion weakens its ability to remain tightly closed to carry future babies to term. According to neonatologist, Dr. Kendray Kolb, if a woman’s life is imminently in danger, preterm deliveries are much safer than ripping babies apart in surgical abortions. Treatments for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies are separate from abortion. 

Washington Post’s headline on May 29, 2019, exposed Planned Parenthood’s false statistics   about tens of thousands of women dying from illegal abortions. Planned Parenthood is also guilty of discriminating against minority women. The 2010 census found 80% of clinics in minority neighborhoods where twenty million black babies have been aborted.  

For women with unplanned pregnancies there is help. Three thousand non-profit Crisis Pregnancy Centers served 1.9 mil Americans in 2019.  Women with access to employer provided family leave increased 64%, and 29% of workers have access to state-based programs providing paid family leave. Safe Haven laws relieve the burden of parenting without killing the unborn child. 

In Janet Yellen’s History of Women Workers, before Roe, 50% of the labor force were women. With increased educational opportunity they were equipped for meaningful careers. Many were also mothers. Like Justice Amy Coney Barrett, mother of seven, they not only managed motherhood and careers but excelled. Thanks to Hollywood, pregnancy outside of marriage is no longer taboo.

Roe protected babies older than six months gestation. Now that’s gone. In New York, California, and other Blue States, abortion is legal to the moment of birth.   

The SCOTUS decision to return the right to regulate abortion to states has ignited conversations about weighing rights of mothers and tiny human beings who at four weeks gestation have hearts that beat 65 times/minute; brains at 8 weeks; and by 12 weeks are fully formed human beings who can smile and feel pain.      

Let’s hope both parties will be equitably represented and justice about regulating abortion will prevail. 

Future Reading:

Developmental Stages  

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/7247-fetal-development-stages-of-growth

Health Risks:

https://www.eviemagazine.com.post/5-myths-about-abortion-that-need-to-be-debunked-in-the-wake-of-roe-v-wade

https://adviceandaid.com/very-real-effects-of-abortion-facts-you-need/

Polls:

Harvard/Harris: 

www.nationalreview.co/benchmemos/harvard-harris-poll-on-dobbs-and-abortion

 Racial Discrimination

https://www.theepochtimes.com/citing-racial-discrimination-black-leaders-target-roe-v-wade

Elizabeth Madden

College of Professional Studies