Stephen Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute and one of the speakers at the World Congress of Families IV which Claire and I will be attending next week in Warsaw, takes an optimistic view of the ruling. His column is really worthwhile reading -- insightful, balanced, and encouraging a specific direction for our prayers. Here are his concluding paragraphs:[Kennedy's] opinion involved research into the history of the partial-birth abortion debate, as well as research into the procedure itself, and the resulting text suggests a strong visceral reaction. Kennedy speaks of a doctor “pierc[ing] the skull and vacuum[ing] he fast-developing brain of [the] unborn child, a child assuming the human form.” Elsewhere he quotes Congress’s language, saying that “Congress determined that the abortion methods [the Ban] proscribed had a ‘disturbing similarity to the killing of a newborn infant.’” Again, he insists: “Where it has a rational basis to act, and it does not impose an undue burden, the State may use its regulatory power to bar certain procedures and substitute others, all in furtherance of its legitimate interests in regulating the medical profession in order to promote respect for life, including life of the unborn” (emphasis added).
Now I don't want to read too much into one phrase, but if Kennedy has begun to reflect on the need "to promote respect for life, including the life of the unborn," then his thinking on this issue has already begun to change. He cannot help but have noted the gruesome resemblance between partial birth abortion and infanticide. And how can he wish to promote respect for unborn human life, as he writes, and yet continue to countenance the daily dismemberment of 4,000 unborn Americans, on the other. He surely knows now, if he did not before, that unborn babies "assume … the human form" within a few weeks of conception.
The major media, which has never seen an abortion it didn't like, has warned that this Supreme Court decision signals the end of Roe v. Wade. This is wild exaggeration. But if Kennedy thinks through the logic of his arguments, they may be more right than they realize. And he will surely be encouraged in his rethinking by the four staunchly pro-life members of the Supreme Court.
If Kennedy does begin coming down more firmly on the side of Life, then this would indeed be something to rejoice about. The Partial Birth Abortion Ban may have begun to put Roe v. Wade on a path to absolute extinction.
