Many of my readers are Pro-Life. Some are Pro-Choice, few have a real understanding of how we got here, via the courts and the Supreme Court. My good friend Brian Johnston has written an excellent article about Roe v Wade and associated cases that creates the “right to choose”.
I do find it interesting that the Left believes a 15 year old girl has the maturity to choose to kill a baby, but a 30 year old woman does not have the right to choose the education her child receives and where. Isn’t this hypocritical? Isn’t it anti-feminist? Just a thought.
Steamrolled by the Media and Abortion Industry
Brian Johnston, California Pro-Life, 3/18/21
Why are abortion advocates urgently and furtively racing to find new measures by which to secure the, “right to choose?’
The popular media have never told you this, but …women have never been given, ‘the right to choose!’
Contrary to the prevalent myth, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the decisions handed down on January 22, 1973, specifically deny women this widely proclaimed “right to choose.” These conjoined, twin-decisions do indeed allow abortion on demand, but only through giving this right to physicians. They alone were given a ‘right to choose.’
Roe’s attorneys themselves, as well as numerous amicus briefs submitted in the landmark, class-action suit, argued that abortion must be granted to women as a ‘right to choose as they see fit,’ and specifically, that women had, ‘a right to control of their own body.’
But Justice Blackmun directly repudiated and denied all these claims.
“…appellant and some amici argue that the woman’s right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses. With this we do not agree.’ (Roe, 153)
And Justice Blackmun then explicitly TRAMPLES the legal basis of the feminist ‘mystique’ claims to control their own bodies,
“The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. In fact, it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one’s body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court’s decisions. The Court has refused to recognize an unlimited right of this kind in the past.” (Roe, 154)
It was the physician, and only the physician, granted decision-making rights on that fateful day in 1973. Let’s look at more direct statements from Roe;
‘…the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without regulation by the State, that, in his medical judgment, the patient’s pregnancy should be terminated. If that decision is reached, the judgment may be effectuated by an abortion free of interference by the State.” Roe, 410 U.S. at 163.
Roe, continuing,
“The decision vindicates the right of the physician to administer medical treatment according to his professional judgment up to the points where important state interests provide compelling justifications for intervention. Up to those points, the abortion decision in all its aspects is inherently, and primarily, a medical decision, and basic responsibility for it must rest with the physician.”
Id. at 164-66.
It is then in Doe, Roe v Wade’s conjoined companion decision, that Justice Blackmun gives the truly-overwhelming reality of physician absolutism: the abortionist’s opinion alone gives absolute authority to do any abortion at any time in pregnancy, without oversight or investigation by any other authority. It is only doctors who can kill, not women.
The explicit instructions from Justice Blackmun are not constrained by any physical, medical needs of mother or child – this is not for any of the ‘hard cases.’ The abortionist is free to exercise vague ideas of a very gauzy and insubstantial nature. This unlimited and unsupervised authority may be exercised,
“in the light of all factors–physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age–relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health.” (Doe,183)
Doe expressly ‘downgraded’ (via actual removal!) the state’s compelling interest in protecting life. (Doe 182) The government is now denied all authority to question the opinions and thus actions of the abortionist. As noted, “…the judgment may be effectuated by an abortion free of interference by the State.” The physician, then, has unquestioned supremacy.
There is little doubt that Blackmun clearly understood what he was doing. His adamant desire was to only protect the physician, his personal lifelong heroes, and to in-no-way grant women the freedom to do abortions at any time or in any way they wanted. This was reflected by an odd request (later revealed in his personal notes). He wished for the Court to issue a press release, restating for public at large that ‘The decision was in no way granting to women the right to abortion-on demand.’ He was the newest member of the Court, and chagrined to find this was not permissible in the Court’s protocol.
For abortion-rights advocates this exaltation of the physician and ‘diminution of the woman’ has always stuck in their craw. Justice Ginsburg disliked Roe intensely. She told the Chicago Tribune, it’s, “about a doctor’s freedom to practice his profession as he thinks best… it wasn’t woman centered. It was physician centered.”
So, what can the media and abortion advocates do? As you know, they have simply asserted that they have the right anyway. It is simply proclaimed as a given. With the assistance of a very willing media, they have “steamrolled” and ‘gaslit’ a very confused public.
But what is their gain? What is their strategy?
Today we see this false assertion of theirs being used to justify supposed, state-versions of ‘Roe,’ because, ‘Roe may be overturned soon!’ But these ‘state-versions of Roe’ do not follow the actual language of Roe v. Wade. Instead, these new measures simply insert new and different language that reflects the public ‘impression’ of Roe. To get their way, they are ‘gaslighting’ as ‘true,’ what is in fact, only artifice.
This misleads and steamrolls opponents into acceptance.
“Why do you complain about this new measure?” they ask. “This is harmless. We already have been granted the right to choose, the right to bodily integrity, the right to unlimited abortion!”
The current effort to restore the ERA is another shining example of this ‘steamroll.’ It would go much further than Roe ever did! It would alter the wording of the Constitution. But abortion advocates pretend the process is insubstantial.
The recent passage of HR 5 the ‘Equality Act,’ is yet another example. Attorneys agree this measure could be used to grant an unlimited right to abortion based on gender. It would require government funding of abortion, again based on gender – not privacy. It would deny any conscience-clause provisions to those who do not wish to participate: all this based on gender. But still, they pretend this idea is, ‘not anything new.’ Roe has already dealt with that.’ This is steamrolling.
The dominant media culture has aided and abetted this misrepresentation of the actual rulings of Roe and Doe. This dramatically false view of these decisions is being used as a ‘snow job’ to secure rights that radical feminists have never had but desperately seek to enshrine. The goal is to cement that misunderstanding into the law as quickly as possible.
You are being lied to about the actual nature of the abortion debate and a woman’s “right to choose.”
In Roe and Doe, the right of physicians to kill was indeed granted, and this crucial departure from medicine’s and civilization’s mores should be a change that awakens all of us, particularly in this hour. Doctors now wield an ominously unrestricted ‘right to choose.’
Medicine’s embrace of this freedom to kill at discretion has in fact metastasized well beyond children in the womb. Understanding that battle is the deeper task at hand.
Medical killing is now being practiced and marketed much more widely than the Roe/Doe decisions initiated. Albeit this killing of their vulnerable patients is under different, more acceptable language; but it is clearly rampant. Ironically, radical feminists in their current agitations, are merely lamenting they too, can’t personally have a hand as the agents of killing. But that is not the real injustice of Roe and Doe. Until we recognize and address the crime of medical killing, lives and society itself will continue to be steamrolled
**Brian Johnston’s new book, The Evil Twins: Roe and Doe; How the Supreme Court Unleashed Medical Killing will be published by New Regency Publishing and is scheduled for release on April 14, 2021. Pre-orders available at special, pre-order pricing at New Regency, on Amazon and at AuthorStock.
Brian Johnston is the Western Regional Director of the National Right to Life Committee. He is available for comment and remote or in-person speaking (800) 924-2490
