The Overturning of Roe v. Wade

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, you may recall last time we recorded the podcast, we talked about the possibility that Roe v. Wade would be overturned by the Supreme Court And we said, “Wouldn't it be something if the next time we record a podcast that Roe v. Wade were overturned?” And that is exactly what has happened.

DR. CRAIG: It’s unbelievable isn’t it? I feel as though I'm living in a new day for America, a new era. Abortion on demand is no longer the law of our land, and this terrible moral stain on American society has been removed. So I have such a feeling of joy and liberation and pride now again in America instead of shame for the terrible moral atrocities that were being perpetrated against the unborn over these last 50 years.

KEVIN HARRIS:

In 1974, Justice Harry Blackmun, the author of the Roe v. Wade decision, said in a televised interview that Roe “will be regarded as one of the worst mistakes in the court’s history or one of its greatest decisions.”^[1]

It looks like the Supreme Court – this particular Supreme Court – thought that this was a big mistake.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, they certainly did. I recently saw an interview where the original lawyer in the Roe v. Wade case who was arguing for the right to abortion as a constitutional right admitted that she didn't expect to win the case – that the case was so weak constitutionally that she was quite surprised when the Court said that abortion is a constitutional right. What this present Court has said is that this decision that was rendered in 1973 was bad law, the Constitution does not contain such a right either explicitly or implicitly, and that therefore we are well rid of this bad decision.

KEVIN HARRIS: There's an article in First Things. Salvatore Cordileone said,

Together, we persevered. And today it is hard not to feel like we triumphed.

But in truth the overthrow of Roe is not the final triumph but the beginning of a new and harder road ahead. Our goal is not to create a culture where abortion is illegal, but where it is unthinkable. To do that requires sacrificial love for both mother and child.

There will be protests and threats and tumult. I ask you not to back down but to redouble your commitment. Most of all, I ask you to pray—because without God we can do nothing.

That’s a big question. I mean, now that Roe v. Wade is overthrown, what do we do next? What's our response?

DR. CRAIG: I really like what this author says. It's not just a matter of making abortion illegal, it's a matter of changing people's thinking so that they come to value life and see the unborn as human beings who are invested with intrinsic worth and therefore possessors of human rights like the right to life. There needs to be a change of attitude and of heart on this issue, not just the imposition of laws now at the state level. But in terms of what we need to do next, I think all of us need to redouble our efforts to be involved in the pro-life cause. It's not over by any means. On the contrary, it's a new beginning, and this same struggle for the life of the unborn will now go on in state legislatures and gubernatorial races and so forth. So we can't afford to ignore these local elections anymore because these are the people now who will be determining the laws.

KEVIN HARRIS: There's an interview with a heavily pregnant woman that has gone viral. I don't know if you've had a chance to see it. But she wrote the words in like black magic marker, “not yet a human” across her belly to protest the Supreme Court's decision. Amanda Herring, 32, was among the pro-choice protesters in Washington DC. She said, “I am very pregnant – I'm due tomorrow.” The Jewish educator told NBC News the Supreme Court ruling was an infringement on her religion. She says, “This is a part of me right now. I'm Jewish and according to Jewish law and tradition, life begins with the first breath at birth, and that if anything were to happen up until then that it is part of me, and it is my decision, it's part of my body – it's like a limb. It's a significant part of me, but it's my decision.”

What do you think about her comments?

DR. CRAIG: I think this is a great illustration of driving an argument to its logical conclusion to the point where you see the absurdity of the position. One of the most effective ways to refute a position is to drive it all the way to its logical consequences. And the logical consequence of abortion on demand (which was legal in this country) was that these babies could be killed right up until the moment of delivery. Indeed, in the monstrous practice of partial birth abortion, the baby would actually be partly delivered and then the physician would go in with forceps and crush the skull of the baby and then withdraw or extract the remains of its mangled corpse from the woman's body. This is clearly homicide, it seems to me. And yet on her view this is not homicide. I think it shows where the logical conclusion is of denying the humanity of these unborn babies and the kind of consequences that result from that. It results in a view of what is human that is preposterous. To think that the baby in the womb ready for delivery is non-human but a few minutes later after delivery it is human is absurd. There's nothing about making that physical transition that would turn a non-human thing into a human being. Moreover, it's evident that her position on this is biologically and medically absurd. The unborn baby growing inside her body is not like a limb. It is not in any sense a part of her body. It is a separate human being that is growing and developing inside her. It is as it were like someone hooked up to a life support system. Just as a patient who has COVID-19 and is hospitalized and is hooked up to a ventilator for life support doesn't become part of the ventilator. In the same way the baby here (who is on this life support system inside her womb) is not in any sense a part of her body. So she is simply grossly mistaken on this and betrays a terrible ignorance of biology and medicine. The final comment that I would make about this is that I think it's tremendously ironic that she puts this down to her Jewish beliefs. Because what she's doing is she is saying, “We should determine public policy based upon my private religious opinions.” That's what they've always accused us Christians of doing! I think in order to participate in the debate in the public square you need to offer non-sectarian reasons in support of your views on public policy. Otherwise someone could say, for example, “I think, according to my religion, that human life begins at about eight years of age. And prior to that children can be used for human sacrifice to our gods.” And that private religious opinion has just as much validity as her’s. So it's really bad policy to advocate what she's doing. I guess there is one more point. There's so many things to say about this! The last point is that the overturning of Roe v. Wade doesn't do anything to take away her rights. The overturning of Roe v. Wade didn't make abortion illegal. All it did was make a legal ruling that it's not a constitutional right. But you can still go get an abortion if you want to, if she wants to do this. There's nothing in the ruling that takes away that right. It simply says it's not part of the Constitution. And we can imagine all sorts of other rights that are not guaranteed in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. For example, we are not guaranteed constitutionally the right to a two-week vacation. We're not guaranteed the right to a guaranteed annual income in the Constitution. So to say that abortion is not a constitutional right does nothing in and of itself to make it illegal. So she's just completely off base in her reaction to this as something that is denying her rights.

KEVIN HARRIS: By the way, our audience may be interested in an article by Ben Shapiro. Ben interviewed you a couple of years ago. He has an article on how she's wrong about what the Jewish view is in this instance. I want to refer people to that article. It's easy to find. You can look that up. We've seen a real backlash from those in favor of Roe v. Wade. A number of celebrities and political leaders are saying this was because Christians are forcing this. But surely the pro-life movement is more than just a Christian movement.

DR. CRAIG: Oh, I think that's quite right. I remember some years ago when I had a debate with the famous philosopher Richard Taylor. Before the debate we all had dinner together, and somehow the topic turned to abortion. Richard Taylor, who was arguing against moral values and duties being grounded in God in our debate, said that he was pro-life. I was surprised. I said, “You're pro-life?” And he said, “Well, of course.” I mean, he thought it was a no-brainer. Of course he was pro-life. These are human beings, and so he was in favor of preserving their lives. One of the most famous of the pro-life advocates who has now passed away was Bernard Nathanson who was a humanist and was once a pro-abortion rights advocate and then changed his mind and came to see that as a humanist that he had to stand for human life in all of its stages of development including in this developing stage of an unborn baby. So it's not just a Christian position.

KEVIN HARRIS: We've discussed before but it might be helpful to revisit with some of our newer listeners that you don't speak out on subjects like abortion or same-sex marriage and the like because they are political issues but because they are moral issues.

DR. CRAIG: Yes.

KEVIN HARRIS: Explain the difference to our listeners.

DR. CRAIG: I'm glad you raised this because I think this is apt to be misunderstood. I am not here championing Republican causes or taking political positions. I assiduously avoid making public statements on political questions. But these are ethical questions and spiritual questions that the Christian faith has a position on. The Christian faith thinks of human beings as made in the image of God and therefore invested with intrinsic moral worth and with fundamental human rights. So the question then is: Is the developing fetus a human being? And as I said a moment ago, I think that biologically and medically it is indisputable that the developing fetus is a human being in the early stages of its development. So this is not for me just another political issue. This is a very profound moral and spiritual question. Over the last 50 years in our country millions and millions of human beings have been ruthlessly cut to pieces or incinerated with chemicals wantonly. This American holocaust was a shame and a blight on our country that needed to come to an end. I am glad that the Supreme Court has now ruled that abortion on demand is not the law of the land and this issue will be returned to the people to decide how to regulate abortion. My position on this is that this is a significant ethical, spiritual issue on which I, as a Christian, need to have a position.

KEVIN HARRIS: The New York Times says,

The Supreme Court has become the most pro-religion it’s been since at least the 1950s, and it appears to include the six most pro-religion justices since at least World War II.^[2]

The Roberts court has ruled in favor of religious groups in more than eight in ten cases that it has heard. It seems that if we're interested in preserving religious freedoms that ensuring that we have this kind of Supreme Court is key.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, I think that's absolutely right. We want a Court that will be committed to strict constitutionalism, to following the letter of the Constitution, and to preserving the religious liberty that is guaranteed to us in the Bill of Rights. Therefore the free exercise of religion is a precious right that we have constitutionally, and it is so important that this Court is standing up for that constitutional right over and over again now.

KEVIN HARRIS: And of course things are changing so fast and news is breaking left and right, the Supreme Court just ruled,

a high school football coach had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games . . . The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal members in dissent. The decision came less than a week after the court ruled, by the same vote, that Maine could not exclude religious schools from a state tuition program. [Justice Neil M. Gorsuch], writing for the majority, said that the prayers of the coach, Joseph Kennedy, were protected by the First Amendment and that the school district had erred in suspending him after he refused to end the practice.^[3]

This is kind of like an avalanche of rulings in favor of religious freedom and free speech going on right now.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. There's a connection – isn't it? – between those two. The free exercise of religion and the freedom of speech that combine in a case like this. And it's encouraging to see that the majority of justices don't take the coach’s praying to be coercive in any sense. He's not coercing the students to pray along with him. It just amazes me how over and over and over again these three radical leftist judges interpret these practices in such a way that they characterize the coach's behavior as coercion of the students to pray or to have a certain religious practice. I think one of the most significant things to come out of this Bremerton decision concerning the football coach is not just about religious practice or prayer but from what I've read this puts the nails in the coffin to the so-called Lemon test for what sort of religious expression will be permitted. The Lemon test was promulgated by an earlier Supreme Court decision that said you must not have any expression of religious belief that has a primary purpose that is not secular, and that there must not be an excessive entanglement of the government in religion. The problem was that this was so ambiguous and so subjective that it was easily used to place an undue burden of proof upon proponents of religious liberty. I have an attorney in my Defenders class who has repeatedly complained to me over the past years about the Lemon test and its subjectivity and ambiguity. This decision, everyone seems to agree, has pretty much put an end to the Lemon test. That is no longer going to be the criterion by which religious practices are judged. Now, this is really interesting because the Lemon test has been used in a number of significant Supreme Court decisions. For example, the famous Dover case in 2005 that forbade the teaching of intelligent design in schools on the grounds that it was religious. And it was to the Lemon test that Judge Jones appealed in ruling against the teaching of intelligent design. It will be really interesting to see what sort of cases could be reopened as a result of this decision.

KEVIN HARRIS: Wow. By the way, the L.A. Times reported that some coaches said they're not opposed to prayers before or after games but want to ensure that students don't feel pressured or compelled against their will. That's an obvious consideration. You were just talking about the purpose . . .

DR. CRAIG: Sure. That's right. And the problem is that the minority on the Court are so adamant against religious expressions that they view almost anything as coercive even if students voluntarily want to join the coach at midfield and pray.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we wrap up the podcast today, now that Roe v. Wade is gone and this decision has come down, maybe you can give us our marching orders. What do we do next?

DR. CRAIG: Let me say a few things about what we can do now and where we should go from here. I think that every Christian should be supporting the pro-life cause financially. So I would encourage you to take a portion of your charitable giving and to set it aside for, for example, your local crisis pregnancy center. These centers are especially under duress today as abortion rights terrorists are beginning to attack some of these crisis pregnancy centers where women are trying to exercise their free choice of carrying their baby to term. I would encourage folks to give. This is the easiest thing you can do. It takes so little effort to write a check and to support these pro-life causes. Secondly, I would encourage folks to volunteer at a local crisis pregnancy center. Our Defenders class has adopted as our project the First Care Women's Clinic in our area. Every few Saturdays we will go for a Saturday morning and work at the clinic. Oh, just moving boxes, weeding around the building, painting, filing, helping in any way that we can the work of the wonderful volunteers that are there counseling and providing for these young mothers. This is a way not just of showing our opposition to abortion but it's a way of showing our support for these young mothers and fathers who want to have children rather than get an abortion. Then, of course, I think we need to be involved politically. We need, when the local elections are coming up, to identify who are the consistent pro-life candidates for the offices and to vote for those candidates. I would resist those who say negatively, “This is just single issue politics” because this is an issue of life and death. Most other political issues are not life and death questions, but this one is. So I think we need to be involved in voting for candidates who will vote for the rights of the unborn, for their human value and dignity, and so support these pro-life causes. Those would be some of the things that we might do, I think, in support of young mothers who want to have their children.^[4]