The mere thought of anyone purposely killing an innocent little baby is so horrible that most people just do not want to think of it.
Can we imagine such horror multiplied many thousands of times?
We react in sorrow at the memory of the 6 million murders of Jews — the Holocaust — committed by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. We still are shocked that the Soviet Union committed uncountable millions of murders of opponents of that Communist tyranny. But in our own usually humane United States, our system of law has allowed — and still allows — the killing of unwanted innocent babies!
On this date, Jan. 22, in 1973, the United States Supreme Court officially authorized the taking of innocent little babies’ lives by choice!
The case before the Supreme Court was called “Roe v. Wade.”
“Roe” was an “alias” for a woman later identified as Norma McCorvey. “Wade” was District Attorney Henry B. Wade of Dallas County, Texas. State law in Texas, as in many other states, prohibited abortion. But on this date in 1973, seven members of the U.S. Supreme Court, with two justices dissenting, authorized the killing of unwanted babies, depending upon the “trimester” of a baby’s life.
The opinion was written by Justice Harry Blackmun. Concurring in that opinion or in separate ones were Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justices William J. Brennan, William O. Douglas, Thurgood Marshall, Lewis Powell and Potter Stewart. Dissenting were Justices William Rehnquist and Byron White.
The effect of the ruling was to abolish all state laws that prohibited abortions during the first three months of pregnancy, and allow abortion during the second trimester of pregnancy only for the protection of the health of a prospective mother.
As a result, the lives of countless little babies have been purposefully snuffed out — legally — since 1973.
If babies are unwanted, how much better it would be just to avoid conception, rather than to kill fragile, defenseless life. But the tragic and horrible effects of Roe v. Wade continue to be multiplied in our America.