This week’s issue of Time says that Roe v. Wade hobbled the pro-abortion movement. It’s a point that will be familiar to readers of our January issue, in which Jon Shields makes a similar argument:
Roe v. Wade did far more than create a constitutional right to abortion—it crippled the pro-choice and energized the pro-life movement, creating one of the largest campaigns of moral suasion in American history. Even while nationalizing abortion politics, the Supreme Court’s decision also localized and personalized the issue by pushing it almost entirely out of legislatures, giving an unexpected opening to the pro-life movement to affect the culture, and in turn the wider political debate, in ways no one expected.
Before Roe, the pro-choice movement was truly a movement: It organized letter-writing campaigns, subverted restrictive abortion laws through underground networks of clergy and doctors, and eagerly sought opportunities to debate pro-life advocates. After Roe, obviated by its near-total victory, the movement almost collapsed. It has never fully recovered its former strength and energy.
Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who famously argued Roe itself, confessed that she “missed the energy of our pre-Roe crusade.” After Roe, “our energy and contributions sagged and we seemed only to plod forward. . . . When we talked about the importance of organizing and pro-choice voting, people tended to think, ‘Now, really, I’m so busy. And after all, Roe versus Wade decided the matter.’”
The article—available free to non-subscribers—is here. If you haven’t subscribed, though, why not do so now?
January 3rd, 2013 | 12:49 pm
If they hearken back to pre-Roe days, we should re-read Nathanson’s “Aborting America” before making glorious assumptions about the movements “honesty,” scientific “credibility,” or peaceful politics… Today, an energized pro-choice rally would be a ludicrous spectacle.
January 3rd, 2013 | 12:50 pm
I do sometimes wonder how much impact a change in the law, without a corresponding change in public attitudes, would have on abortion rates.
Anyone who remembers France in the 1960s & 1970s, before the Veil Law of 1975 (Law No. 75-17 of 18 January 1975), will know that pretty well every village seemed to have its « faiseuse d’anges » or “angel-maker.” Everybody knew about it, nobody talked about it and the police regarded it as “women’s business” and turned a blind eye. Occasionally, a woman died and, then, the Parquet, like Captain Renault in “Casablanca,” would be shocked, shocked to discover that such things went on and there would be a brief flurry of prosecutions of unqualified women, quickly rounded up and, so, obviously known to police. Medical practitioners, doctors and midwives were never, ever, prosecuted.
Many people will recall « le manifeste des 343 salopes » on 5 April 1971, when 343, mostly prominent, women admitted to having had an abortion and challenged the authorities to prosecute them. This, needless to say, did not happen. Perhaps even more significant was the publication of a similar manifesto on 3 February 1973 by 331 doctors, including professors in the leading teaching hospitals, admitting to each performing hundreds of abortions a year and, again, challenging the authorities to prosecute them. The procurator of the Republic excused himself on the grounds of “lack of evidence.”
There was something almost sublime in the hypocrisy of the Veil Law, which begins, “The law guarantees respect to every human being from the commencement of life. No derogation from this principle is permitted, except in the case of necessity and according to the provisions defined by the present law.”
Does anyone imagine the position in the United States would be so very different?
January 3rd, 2013 | 2:25 pm
Apparently Michael PS Imagines that the hypocrisy that existed in France is worse than the vastly greater hypocrisy that currently is practiced in the US where we pretend that over 60 million homicides are perfectly moral and acceptable since we draw the veil of the euphemism “abortion” over the plain fact that we shred small children with the approval of our government.
Michael has a point when he writes that “public attitudes” affect enforcement of laws. We can and must change both to be successful, and yes, this I do imagine and know that this has been done often.
Obviously our laws against homicide do not prevent occurrences of homicides, for we intend to murder more millions of small persons.
January 3rd, 2013 | 6:30 pm
“we pretend that over 60 million homicides are perfectly moral and acceptable since we draw the veil of the euphemism “abortion” over the plain fact that we shred small children with the approval of our government.”
We have moved on to second or third generation euphemism—we say “choice” now. The word “abortion” is so harsh sounding, and we don’t want to upset women.
January 4th, 2013 | 4:14 am
De Las Casas
My charge of hypocrisy was specifically directed at the Veil Law, where the National Assembly, too squeamish to establish abortion as a right, sanctioned it as a derogation from a right, namely, the right to respect for life.
How this comports with much-vaunted Gallic logic, I leave to its supporters to consider.
January 4th, 2013 | 8:05 am
I have always been mystified by the claim that when one segments of the population passes a law which is then disobeyed or ignored by another (including many government officials), this constitutes “hypocrisy”. Further that this “hypocrisy” somehow invalidates the rightness of the law.
Do people disobey laws they don’t agree with? Sure. Do government officials look the other way when they’d rather not deal with infractions of the law?” Yup. So what else is new?
Overlooked in the “hypocrisy” trope is that the law also has a teaching function. The law in its limited way instructs what is right and wrong. The fact is that for large portions of the public the naive belief is that if it is legal then it is also moral and what is illegal is also immoral. Thus for many, their moral behavior is a direct reflection of the nation’s legal code.
It is not possible to codify most let alone all moral demands. Nor would it be prudent to legislate much of moral law. But these are separate issues which have little to do with “hypocrisy” objections.
January 4th, 2013 | 10:25 am
Mike Lee
What is the “teaching function” of the Veil Law that, one the one hand declares, ““The law guarantees respect to every human being from the commencement of life. No derogation from this principle is permitted, except in the case of necessity…” and in the next breath permits abortion, for any reason or none, up to the tenth week of gestation?
This is not a case of “one segments of the population passes a law which is then disobeyed or ignored by another,” but of passing a law that itself enunciates a principle that it promptly nullifies in practice.
Now that, it seems to me, can be fairly described as hypocrisy.
January 4th, 2013 | 6:52 pm
Facts to be recalled: “Jane Roe” was Norma McCorvey, who falsely claimed to have been raped; she never had the abortion, putting the baby girl up for adoption; she converted to Catholicism in 1998 and is active in the pro-life movement.
January 5th, 2013 | 1:54 am
Ahh, but sir there has been a “change in public attitudes” since Roe v. Wade was decided. Many changes. The one I call your attention to here is feminism. Supposedly, these days females are expected to be as fully responsible as a man is expected to be. If such an attitude is widespread, people won’t stand for turning a blind eye to death-dealing by females either directly at their hands or by others at the instigation of females. (If such an attitude is not widespread, then the feminist project is exposed as a fraud.)
January 5th, 2013 | 2:06 am
In its tolerated but illicit exceptions, it teaches that females of whatever age are children. Children, you see, are a class of people who are not held fully responsible and liable for the consequences of their decisions.
Contrary to what feminists might have us believe, the ‘coming out’ of abortion-seekers and their abortion-for-hire partners was not about raising the status of females as moral agents but rather served to more firmly plant the female sex into the moral status of a child.
January 6th, 2013 | 3:05 am
Micha Elyl
Feminist organizations bitterly opposed Article 1 of the Veil Law.
The principle they wished to see enshrined in the law is that the producer controls the product [Les femmes comme tous les autres producteurs ont de fait le droit absolu au contrôle de toutes leurs productions]
The implications of that were not lost on the parties of the Right.
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