When (if) 'Roe' falls

...An abortion by hysterotomy resembles birth by Caesarian section...

...In Aquinas's words, the natural law injunction against killing expresses "the very order of justice and virtue," "the order in the common good...

...Moral reality is seen from the viewpoint of the thinking subject, with the result for the abortion debate that the fetus's claims do not weigh, or do not weigh heavily, against a woman's needs or her claim to reproductive freedom and autonomy...

...The protection of unborn life is also a fundamental demand...

...In Roe v. Wade, the Court declared that prenatal human life could not be protected by state laws...

...It is true, as Mary Ann Glendon confirms, that American law and policy impose severe moral and social pressures on American women...

...Our society's support of family life, of parents and children, is a basic demand of justice...

...That may be true...

...Ironically, however, for prochoice advocates the first solution remains the continuation of abortion on demand...

...a constant reminder of the truth that abortion is the killing of a vulnerable human being...

...Under the Constitution, the individual states, not the national government, have inherent power to protect life as part of their power to provide for the general welfare...

...Judicial and legislative "permissiveness" on abortion, combined with social indifference to family welfare expressed through governmental budgets, is in many cases coercive rather than kindly, dismissive of a woman's rights rather than genuinely respectful of her autonomy...

...Their position seems to be like the stance taken by their counterparts in other Western nations whose laws enact severe restrictions on late-term abortions, with lesser restrictions in the early months...

...The convergence of law and morals with respect to abortion, in sum, is demanded by the dignity of human life...

...As the Catholic bishops have asked in their pastoral on the economy, this country must grow out of the selfish individualism now proffered by so many as the American way, and even the Christian way...

...But what about abortions performed before the fetus is capable of living outside the womb, when it depends for life and nourishment on the placenta to which it is attached in the mother's womb...

...If, as I believe, human life, including unborn human life, cries out for legal protection, is it morally permissible to accept a compromise on abortion...

...more probably, it will define the parameters of future legislative struggles in all fifty states...

...It now appears that Roe v.Wade may be overruled by the Supreme Court itself, or, at least, that its reach will be reduced, if not in the Missouri case, then with one or two more appointments to the Court...

...Even apart from cultural degradation, there is the contemporary drive for autonomy, for control of one's own life, which can lead to lessened concern for or disregard of human relationships, responsibilities, and loves...

...Many physicians, it appears, are reluctant to give full scope to this legal right in the third trimester...

...Of itself, however, such an outcome will not settle the issue of legal protection for the fetus...

...It may also be true that after a decade-and-a-half of legally sanctioned abortion on demand the enactment of an absolute prohibition of abortion is out of reach in all or most of the states...

...The Constitution meant, the Court said, that a woman's right to abortion took precedence over the the fetus's claim to life, even in the final three months of pregnancy...

...There is a difference between moral truth and our knowledge of it...

...In Aquinas's thought, the natural laws or rational moral principles forbidding killing and assaults and commanding, more generally, that harm be done to no one, express the primary, basic structure of the common good of society...

...By twelve weeks, brain structure is complete and fetal heartbeat has been monitored...

...Each human being's claim to life represents a mutual, universal claim, an ordering of moral rule and law...

...In this harsh climate, the pressure to resolve problems of family life and child rearing through abortion can be overwhelming...

...Whatever an individual person's claim to autonomy and the reasons and forces that would impel a person to choose an abortion, the moral question in abortion concerns the killing of the human fetus...

...Each of us, in other words, has a right, a moral claim on our fellow human beings, to have our human dignity respected: our lives first, and our family lives, reputations, friendships, property...

...the baby will be delivered prematurely and, if breathing, will be left to die...

...If, as I think likely, a total or near-total ban on abortion is not possible, it would seem that a new abortion debate in the states could lead to important legal restraints on abortion and support for budgetary and other measures to enhance the dignity of women and families, thereby reducing the pressures on women to opt for abortion.essures on women to opt for abortion...

...It is beyond the purview of this article to propose specific tactics to be followed by defenders of life in the new abortion debate we are likely to witness...

...Suppose, for example, that a proposed state law would prohibit abortion in the final six months of pregnancy except for grave reasons such as a threat to the life of the mother posed by her pregnancy, but would provide little or no protection to the fetus in the first three months of pregnancy (the first trimester...

...Even in the final trimester (24-36 weeks), all that is required is the desire of the mother and the concurrence of a single physician, if a medical facility can be found to accommodate them...

...First, laws forbidding homicide are almost identical with morality in the acts they proscribe and in their source...

...Abortiotfis a form of homicide, and this demands that law intervene to protect unborn human life...

...Even with the broader American public, what will count against abortion will be insistent attention to concrete specifics: a continuing flow of information on who and what the unborn is-a human being like ourselves...

...One thinks of the prochoice marchers in Washington on April 9, chanting, "choice, choice, choice," and then of Pope John Paul II in the United States: "America, you must choose rightly...

...In abortion, then, there is no avoiding the nature of the choice that is made and the action that is taken: It is the taking of a human life...

...The fetus dies of salt poisoning within an hour or two...

...Neither do Americans favor a legal prohibition of all abortions...

...Glendon writes, women (and their children) are isolated...

...In keeping with our extreme individualism, a woman may choose an abortion or she may decide to bear her child, but the responsibility is hers...

...Americans generally, even some who welcomed Roe, seem to have been shocked by the flood of abortions unleashed by that decision, an attitude reinforced as people have become more familiar with the nature of abortion...

...Whatever the reasons offered and the needs asserted to justify abortions, the first function of law is to protect innocent human life...

...it holds the same rank in the adequacy of support payments required for the children of divorce...

...It will be argued that the mere entertaining of the possibility of compromise will weaken the case for banning abortion altogether...

...Obviously, the exceptions that are made mean that the protection of innocent human life is not seen as an absolute...

...As early as eight weeks, the crucial features of development have been achieved and there is readable electrical activity coming from the brain...

...At a later stage, abortion is achieved by removal of the amniotic fluid in which the fetus swims, followed by injection of a saline solution to poison the fetus...

...It is now admitted that before 1973 these same advocates deliberately and grossly exaggerated the number of deaths from illegal abortions...

...My argument is a Thomistic one, based on moral reasoning and not on faith, and on Thomas Aquinas's concepts of the relationship between morality and law...

...Nevertheless, these new claims must be given consideration...

...concretely, each exception involves the killing of a human being...

...It is a conclusion that rises out of the premises, and the premises are hard to deny or evade...

...In this climate, the fetus's claim to life will be semi-deliberately or deliberately ignored by some and will hardly be grasped by many...

...It may also be argued that the acceptance of any compromise on abortion law would necessarily constitute an immoral betrayal of principle...

...The message of many of these laws is that abortion involves human life and poses a grave moral and social problem...

...My moral claim to life is not only individual, it is social and common...

...The effort to protect human life must be a double one...

...Severe restrictions on abortion are successfully enforced in the later and middle stages of pregnancy...

...labor and delivery of the dead fetus complete the procedure...

...Under Roe (the most permissive abortion law among Western nations, according to Mary Ann Glendon's Abortion and Divorce in Western Law [Harvard, 1987]), timing does not matter...

...Not only does each unborn human life have a claim to absolute respect, but our common good, our common dignity as humans, demands that unborn life be reverenced and protected...

...Mary Ann Glendon's book demonstrates that, contrary to impressions created by misrepresentation and misuse of opinion polls, Americans have never supported the Supreme Court's position in Roe sanctioning abortion on demand...

...not only better but more promising, in the sense that these societies take a more serious and responsible view of what abortion is, and may be better positioned to move still further toward reducing its incidence...

...Less severe but still significant standards apply to earlier abortions...

...Compromise may well be the only way to obtain some degree of protection for the fetus...

...as a matter of the mother's constitutional right, prenatal human life can be taken at any point in the nine months of pregnancy...

...Apart from sin and pathology, the knowability of moral principle is affected by long-term intellectual, political, and religious trends...

...What laws will Americans support...

...It is here that the law has its foremost duty...

...By building on this first understanding of justice and the common good we learn, through experience and moral insight, to broaden and deepen the structures of justice...

...Yet since human life is at stake in every abortion, the need for the law's protection would seem to be absolute...

...do not injure another by false witness...

...Every new understanding- biological, genetic, medical-shows a continuum in unborn ' human life...

...It would be unrealistic, however, to expect that abortion laws in most states will prohibit all abortions...

...Justice, therefore, expresses an equality of moral claims among human beings...

...Apart from the degree of public understanding of what abortion is, one must consider the enforceability of restrictive laws, which is dependent to some extent on the willingness or capacity of Americans to obey them...

...In early stages of pregnancy, the fetus is dismembered in the womb, in curettage by use of a sharp instrument, in suction abortion with a vacuum tube, with evacuation of the fetal remains...

...Both morals and law are about justice, right relationships among human beings, based upon what each of us owes to the other...

...Judging what is politically feasible in the American context is a very different exercise from determining what is ethically acceptable, but the two kinds of analysis are both relevant...

...In the moral community of human beings, each of us is related to every other...

...The language may be considered quaint, but can we doubt that for many in our society (not excluding ourselves) moral judgments have been clouded...

...Can defenders of human life agree in good conscience to reduced legal protection for prenatal life...

...To name just one, most modern ethical thought rejects the idea of moral principles or natural laws expressing universal, objective moral claims...

...a steady insistence on the human unborn's right to life...

...As Aquinas puts it, even natural law judgments can sometimes be "abolished from the hearts of men and women...

...Still, the question remains: Is it morally permissible to accept compromise on abortion law...

...In our respect for life, our refusal to attack it, one finds the basic elements of justice...

...Yet from the viewpoint of objective morality the situation is better than in this country...

...Dred Scott was, in effect, overruled by the Civil War...

...It is here that law and morals converge with respect to abortion...

...DANIEL A. DEGNAN, S.J., teaches law and jurisprudence at Seton Hall Law School...

...Both law and moral principle spring from the judgment that it is wrong to take another's life, or, more fully, from the recognition that justice requires, as its most urgent demand, that the dignity of each human life be accorded an absolute respect and value...

...In other Western nations, society has learned to live with compromise, often after bitter struggles...

...Abortion advocates predict massive disobedience, with back-alley abortions injuring many and killing some women...

...Yet, in our society, a partial divergence of law and morals occurs, the consequence of two separate but related realities: the response of Americans, at this time in our history, to abortion as a moral and legal question, and the practical limitations of laws forbidding or restricting abortion...

...The effort to restore protection of human life in laws concerning abortion must be accompanied by a humane understanding of the moral and social forces in this country that lead women to choose abortions...

...In fact and logic, and therefore in morals, whatever the Supreme Court has said, it has proved impossible to separate third-trimester abortions from infanticide (24 weeks being the lower end of viability...

...The cause, he argues, is an ignorance and a misdirected will or love arising in a society or in individuals out of sin or corruption...

...Those who support the "seamless garment" approach to the defense of life must learn and convey a different lesson...

...As Alasdair Maclntyre of Notre Dame and John Finnis of Oxford have noted, Aquinas relies on commonly known moral principles, beginning with respect for life, a principle that both directs individual moral action and requires community response in the form of law...

...In my view such an all-or-nothing approach is not required and may not be prudent...

...It follows that, if Roe is indeed modified, meaningful restrictions on abortion can be sought with genuine hope...

...Underlying this political reality is the response of Americans to the morality of abortions and, further, to their understanding of the relationship between law and morals in abortion...

...This second, concurrent effort must be a broad, continuing one, to enable Americans as a community to recognize and accept their moral responsibilities to one another, both in their personal lives and in their laws...

...The premature baby, often born alive, is left to die...

...do not commit adultery (thus injuring another's spouse and children...

...do not steal...

...In Dred Scott (1857), the Court declared that under the Constitution blacks could not be citizens and could not be protected by federal laws such as the Missouri Compromise...

...Second, the legal prohibition of homicide expresses the common good of humanity itself...

...In perverse complement, this nation's abortion and divorce laws are more permissive than those of any other nations studied...

...What is the convergence between law and morals in abortion...

...The result of this approach is not likely to be a full expression in law of the injustice of abortion...

...It can, however, save many of the unborn, while affirming the principle of the dignity of human life...

...Here I want to argue that the moral principles relating to abortion are not equally evident to all Americans, or to modern people in general...

...The question is important...

...DANIEL A. DEGNAN When the Supreme Court issued its judgment in the case of Roe v. Wade in 1973, the Catholic bishops, in an inspired comment, called it another Dred Scott decision...

...After the eighth week, what follows is principally growth...

...At a first basic level, these demands of justice are expressed in the ten commandments (treated by Aquinas as ethical, not religious, propositions): Do not kill...

...With specific reference to abortion, Ms...

...The likely effect of a new decision overturning or narrowing Roe will be to restore to the states the power to prohibit or restrict abortions...

...Among Western nations the United States ranks lowest in its support of families, particularly of women and children...

...Abortion, therefore, is twice a wrong: It violates a human being's claim to life, and it destroys the order of justice and the common good...

...The Court's 1973 declaration of a right to abortion grounded in a personal right of privacy deprived the states of any authority to exert control over abortion...

...In consequence, defenders of human life against abortion cannot rely on the force of their form of ethical reasoning, particularly in efforts to persuade those Americans who are all too well instructed in relativist, subjectivist, situationist modes f moral discernment...

...That my life is to be respected is a claim made upon everyone and a duty owed by all...

...In late abortions drugs can be used to induce labor...

...How many persons in our society, as an expression of individual will and moral belief, are likely to seek illegal abortions as a solution to a personal or social problem or need...

...The question I want to address here, in anticipation of such a judgment by the Court, is a moral one...

...Laws, however moral their subject matter, are enacted by the political community, through its representatives...