Court decision a step backwards

April 23, 2007 —

The embers of the abortion debate were reignited last Wednesday when the Supreme Court upheld the ban on a procedure popularly labeled "partial-birth abortion." The decision signifies a reversal in the direction the Court has historically taken with regards to abortion, and has the potential to define Chief Justice John Roberts' Court.

The dissenting opinion was written by Justice Ruth Ginsburg, who argued that the majority opinion - authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy - was at odds with the Court's jurisprudence. Indeed, the Supreme Court struck down a similar abortion ban seven years ago in a majority opinion written by Sandra Day O'Connor.

This is relevant, because it brings into question the court's credibility and authority: ignoring its own decisions and the decisions of innumerable lower courts, the Supreme Court has handed the anti-abortion movement a political victory at the cost of its own integrity. Most newspapers have criticized the Court as such.

But the goal of anti-abortionists is not to get partial-birth abortion banned and leave it at that, but to use that ban as a stepping stone to get all abortion procedures banned. While these people - you may be among them - often possess a profound sense of moral forthrightness, they lack a regard for history, which has shown that civilized societies allow abortion because the economic and social costs of banning it are truly disastrous.

The recent, and perhaps best example of the social costs of banning abortion is Romania. In 1966, Romania's "little Stalin" Nicolae Ceaucescu - whom I hope is enjoying his permanent vacation in Hell - issued a decree banning abortion, leading to a swelling in the population and a concurrent rise in a laundry list of social ills, including, but not limited to: rampant child abandonment (and subsequent homelessness and death), women killed and maimed in illegal "back alley" abortions, high unemployment, an AIDS epidemic, overpopulated orphanages, and last, but certainly not least, a massive spike in crime.

In the decades following Ceaucescu's decree, Romania was probably one of the worst places in the world to live. Unwanted children were left uneducated, raised in overpopulated orphanages and on the streets, and turned to violence to survive. Even today, Romania remains a stunning example of the devastating effects of an abortion ban.

I do not consider myself a morally reprehensible person, and the physical act of an abortion makes me feel ill. As do the pictures of aborted fetuses and the other appeals to emotion. It's not as if I don't realize how sickening the process can be. But I am a journalist by trade and a (amateur) historian by temperament, so I have to realize that those appeals to emotion are just that: appeals to emotion. The consequences of an abortion ban, best illustrated by Romania under Ceaucescu, could clearly threaten the stability of our country, and the anti-abortion movement's rhetoric does not convince me otherwise.

Civilized societies have allowed abortion for a reason: disallowing it releases uncontrollable, uncivilizing forces.