Those of us at the time who were already concerned about the abortion issue believed otherwise. Unlike most of the media, anti-abortion activists took the time to read both decisions and concluded that they legalized abortion not just through the first trimester, but through all stages of pregnancy right up to the moment of birth. We also predicted that abortion would turn out to be the first step on the slippery slope to infanticide, euthanasia and worse. Sadly, we have been proven right on all counts.
In court case after court case, the awful legacy of the Roe and Doe decisions has proven not only that the mere intent to abort is enough to deny the right to life to a viable fetus, but that the “unwanted child” language of the Roe decision jeopardized newborn infants as well. Ten years after the Roe and Doe decisions, then-President Ronald Reagan wrote in the spring 1983 issue of the Human Life Review that: “We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life — the unborn — without diminishing the value of all human life.”
By way of example he talked about Baby Doe, an Indiana Down's Syndrome infant that had been allowed to starve to death with the approval of the Indiana Supreme Court. President Reagan wrote that in response to that awful act he had directed the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services to apply civil rights regulations to protect handicapped newborns. Three years later, in 1986 (AHA and AMA v. Bowen), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Baby Doe regulations, stating that the federal government has no authority “to give unsolicited advice either to parents, to hospitals or to state officials who are faced with difficult treatment decisions concerning handicapped children.”
Two years ago President Bush signed into law the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, a bill designed to discourage late-term “live-birth abortions,” wherein labor is induced prematurely, and the newborn preemie is left to die. As best I can determine, that bill hasn't been undone by the courts yet. But the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, signed into law by the president last year, has been effectively stopped by lower court decisions.
At the other end of the spectrum, “physician-assisted suicide” has become the mantra of the death with dignity crowd, and one state, Oregon, legalized the practice six years ago. Oregon's Death with Dignity Act allows a terminally ill patient to be given a lethal dose of barbiturates. According to Oregon's Department of Human Services (DHS), which annually provides an assessment of the state's unique law, Oregon physicians have legally facilitated the demise of 171 Oregonians since 1998. According to pro-life groups in Oregon, however, physician-assisted suicides are under-reported, and there is no way of telling how many of the supposedly terminally ill were actually terminally ill.
In an attempt to stop the Oregon suicides, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in November 2001 issued an interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act prohibiting doctors from prescribing controlled substances for use in physician-assisted suicides. Although all the medications prescribed in the Oregon suicides have been controlled substances, Oregon's version of death with dignity has nevertheless continued uninterrupted, thanks first to a court-imposed injunction on the Ashcroft ruling and most recently to a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals edict that found that the attorney general had somehow exceeded his authority.
Add to the mix of abortion, infanticide and euthanasia the awful prospect of cloning human embryos for scientific experimentation now being debated in American universities, state legislatures and the halls of Congress, it becomes painfully evident that we, as a nation, are rapidly approaching the frightening end of the slope.
Ken Concannon is a freelance writer from All Saints Parish in Manassas, VA.
(This article courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald.)
