Why Americans Will Not Accept Roe v. Wade

Edward Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington recently testified before a U.S. Senate panel considering the legacy of the two infamous abortion decisions, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. His testimony raised several of the most significant issues related to these two tragic decisions. A selection:
Roe is the Dred Scott of our age. Like few other Supreme Court cases in our nation’s history, Roe is not merely patently wrong but also fundamentally hostile to core precepts of American government and citizenship. Roe is a lawless power grab by the Supreme Court, an unconstitutional act of aggression by the Court against the political branches and the American people. Roe prevents all Americans from working together, through an ongoing process of peaceful and vigorous persuasion, to establish and revise the policies on abortion governing our respective states. Roe imposes on all Americans a radical regime of unrestricted abortion for any reason all the way up to viability–and, under the predominant reading of sloppy language in Roe’s companion case, Doe v. Bolton, essentially unrestricted even in the period from viability until birth. Roe fuels endless litigation in which pro-abortion extremists challenge modest abortion-related measures that state legislators have enacted and that are overwhelmingly favored by the public–provisions, for example, seeking to ensure informed consent and parental involvement for minors and barring atrocities like partial-birth abortion. Roe disenfranchises the millions and millions of patriotic American citizens who believe that the self-evident truth proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence–that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with an unalienable right to life–warrants significant governmental protection of the lives of unborn human beings.
So long as Americans remain Americans–so long, that is, as they remain faithful to the foundational principles of this country–I believe that the American body politic will never accept Roe.