Life after roe!
Wow! It happened. Roe v. Wade, the most onerous ruling since the Dred Scot ruling, was finally overturned. And make no mistake, it was a great ruling as far as it goes. But that is the question: “How far did it go?” It really didn’t go any further than merely stating the obvious, “There is no right to abortion in the Constitution.” And if that procedure is going to be any part of our culture, it must be handled through one’s elected officials, not through a court of nine people improperly legislating when they should be adjudicating.
So, great! The fundamental rights of the most vulnerable among us, babies in the womb, was restored. The barbaric notion that other humans could use state authority to determine whether another person had a “life worth living” was rightly overturned. But how did we get to that point in the first place? (That’s a question for another article). For now, what makes people think that they can dictate another’s worth just because some state entity arbitrarily gave them permission to do so? When the Dred Scott case erroneously stated that the Constitution gave slave owners the right to say that “slaves were unworthy lives for freedom,” our founding principles shouted “bad law.” And though it was also properly overturned in the face of fierce objection to the contrary, it still took a civil war and years of courageous legislation finally to establish what all people of good will have known all along. That’s where we stand at this moment. Life must be “re-instilled” in our culture in life after Roe
There are things that now must be established in ground more certain than merely Supreme Court rulings. The Constitution did its work; it kicked the discussion back to the legislatures where it belongs, a place where citizens have the vote and unjust laws can be held accountable. The DOBB’s ruling removed the “veneer of respectability” of abortion. One can no longer merely say, “It’s a constitutional right.” Now, one has to argue why dismembering or burning a child in the womb is an “acceptable response” to an “unwanted pregnancy” in a civil society. With so many other options, why is this brutal procedure sanctioned?
And with the veneer removed, now is also the time to really talk about what abortion actually does to women. There are a myriad of physiological and psychological side effects to abortions as well. Those need to be discussed openly if we are going to move forward with life after Roe. And let’s finally be honest about what the libertine/abortion culture has done to us. Men have been reduced to bystanders in the lives of the women and the children that they should be stepping up to protect and love. In fact, abortion as it stood PRE-DOBB’s was the most chauvinistic treatment of women one could imagine. Men were told that they had nothing, that’s right, nothing to do with the baby and that if they did, all they had to do was pay the $200, and their commitment was done. What? Millions of women were now subject to abandonment or abortion, all in the name of “rights.” LIFE AFTER ROE means that we have to restore a culture focused not only on the sanctity of all life, but mutual respect between men and women and a restored view why a “marriage culture” is fundamental to a humane culture as well.
Life after Roe is something that most people didn’t even dream would happen in the DOBB’s case. But it did. And I believe that June 24, 2022, is an opportunity, a second chance, given to America by God Himself. It’s not just the practice of abortion that needs our attention. It’s the way that we teach our children about the sanctity of their own lives, the preciousness of the lives of others as well. It’s time for men and women to quit treating each other merely as sexual playthings with a one-night stand callousness that has brought our nation brokenness, disease, heartache, and over 62 million abortions as a “fix.” It’s time to think of the intimacy of sex as something that follows real commitment where the possibility of a child is viewed as a blessing to be cherished, not a “disease” to be medicated. It’s also time to look upon those who, cherishing all of these things, still find themselves in tough circumstances, see the Church and the humane pro-life society as a place where they can go for many life-affirming answers to the difficulty that they are in. LIFE AFTER ROE means that life solutions need to be sought for the issues of magnitude in our lives and that the “death of the innocents” should not be one of those solutions. To move forward, we have a great opportunity to re-instill in our culture a culture of life that is pro-child, pro-woman, pro-family, pro-science, pro-civility, and ultimately pro-faith in the God who created us, redeemed us, and loved us as His own. Here’s to LIFE AFTER ROE.
The Rev. Gregory Seltz is the executive director of the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty.
Be Informed
Find out why the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of Maine’s ban on aid to religious schools matters. Have a listen to this recent Issues, Etc. podcast with Michael Bindas of the Institute for Justice.
Be Equipped
Drag queen events specifically targeting children are on the rise. LCMS member Mark Hemingway explains, “The moment they start bringing young children through the door [to those events], don’t think twice—shut it down.”
Be Encouraged
“Neither America, nor democracy, nor capitalism, nor socialism, nor military might, nor diplomacy can even come close to beginning to solve the problems that exist in this world. Even in America, without Christ, we are without hope. And really, what a wonderful message of joy that is. It is not man that will change the world, but Christ alone, for in the end, the world cannot be changed; it is fully and completely at enmity with God.”
