Cause and Effect

By Ken Concannon
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 9/4/03)

Decades from now, when historians look back at the moral decline that has been the cultural hallmark of the last 30 years in this country, will they conclude that the legalization of abortion was a symptom of that decline, or its impetus? I don't know. But having lived through it, I'm inclined to believe that the Supreme Court decisions that legalized abortion and embedded it in our Constitution 30 years ago had the effect of jump-starting that decline.

Although the so-called "sexual revolution" of the 1960s and 70s had already begun when the court issued its abortion decisions, and although the abortion movement had enjoyed moderate success in liberalizing abortion laws in a handful of states, it was highly unlikely, 30 years ago, that the success bestowed upon it judicially by the Supreme Court's 1973 abortion decisions could have happened through the legislative process. In fact, it is more likely that the abortion train would have derailed without the help of the Supreme Court.

In 1970 the state legislature in New York liberalized its abortion statute, creating not only the viability rationale for what would later become the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, but also a grass roots right-to-life movement in that state. Many of the legislators who had voted for the new statute were thrown out of office during the next election cycle. In early1972, less than a year before the Supreme Court issued its abortion decisions, the state legislature voted to repeal the liberalized abortion code. Governor Nelson Rockefeller cut short a trip out of state in order to come back to New York and veto the repeal. But New York right-to-lifers were confidant that after the 1973 election cycle they would have enough votes to override a Rockefeller veto.

In the early fall of 1972, the New York Times ran front page stories about the abortion referenda that would take place in November of that year in Michigan and South Dakota. The Times was confidant that the "antiquated" abortion laws would be repealed — especially in Michigan, which had become the target of a number of pro-abortion Hollywood and feminist celebrities. When the referenda failed in both states, the Times buried the story. About the same time the New Jersey legislature rejected an attempt to repeal its abortion statute.

The abortion movement — which had gained some steam in the late '60s by relying on lies about the number of illegal abortions performed every year and by targeting the Catholic Church's opposition to abortion with clever slogans like "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries!" — was running out of legislative gas by the end of 1972. In January, 1973, the Supreme Court remedied the situation by writing abortion into the Constitution.

I can recall a pair of predictions that were made, nearly 30 years ago, about the impact of the Court's abortion decisions on our society.

One was made by a public health nurse who was a panelist at a Princeton University conference on women’s issues. Although she supported the Court's abortion decisions for all the usual reasons, she expressed concern about the effect that legalization would have on the youth of that and succeeding generations. It would, she worried, send a message to our young that abortion was OK, that it was no longer taboo. Instead of an avenue of desperate last resort, abortion would be viewed, she was afraid, as an acceptable alternative to responsible behavior. She predicted a dramatic increase in the number of abortions. Forty million plus abortions later — I guess we can say she was right.

The other prediction came from a Catholic priest in Boonton, New Jersey, not far from where I used to live. The priest predicted that the legalization of abortion would eventually lead to the ruin of the American family, and ultimately to the destruction of our society. His reasoning was based on his belief that the family existed primarily to nurture its young — including those who were about to be born — and that the American family was the glue that held our civilization together. When people started viewing some of their children as disposable, the family, and our society, would be doomed.

When they made their predictions, the nurse and the priest weren't talking about an unfortunate choice democratically made by the society in which we live. They were talking about a direction set by seven old men for what was then a country of approximately 200 million people.

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