Roe vs. Wade
The recent controversy on the issue of legalizing abortion in the Philippines brings back to memory the historic case in the United States of Roe vs. Wade, thus the title of this article.
The exact case is Jane Roe vs. Henry Wade. Jane Roe was only a name appended to the case to make disguise the name of the woman whose real name was Norma L. McCorvey.
Jane Roe claimed that she became pregnant because of rape in 1970. She then wanted to have an abortion to eliminate the fetus which was a product of violent sex, of rape. She did not want to bear the child and give birth to the rapist.
Henry Wade was the District Attorney of Dallas County, Texas, USA. The lower court refused to grant an injunction to bar the imposition of Texas law prohibiting abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court, by a vote of 7 in favor and 2 against, ruled that the Texas law prohibiting abortion is unconstitutional because it violates the right of free choice for abortion enshrined in the U.S. constitution’s 9th Amendment.
Thus, by the landmark 1973 ruling in the case of Roe vs. Wade, abortion was legalized in the United States.
right of citizens to a free choice — to abort the unborn child or not is a personal and protected right. That s what the constitution and the law says. So be it.
The religious and moral debates that preceded the ruling in Roe vs. Wade cut deeply into American society. Even now, or some 35 years later, the arguments still linger and the convictions of people had been more entrenched and solid. The anti-abortion groups have banded together and expanded in numbers. The pro-choice, the pro-abortion also have grown in numbers. Nevertheless, abortion became legal and any woman of legal age, or 18 years old, can have an abortion in a legal abortion clinic or hospital.
This raging debate in the U.S. also encompasses Philippine society these past days. The bill legalizing abortion was filed in Congress and the Catholic church has threatened that it would not allow the sacred rite of communion to congressmen and senators who would vote favorably to legalize abortion. Even the president of the republic would not be allowed communion if she signs the bill into law.
I personally believe that abortion should not be legalized.
I take side with the moral and religious argument that the life of the unborn child, the fetus, is not for the mother to decide on whether it should be ended or be allowed to be born. Life is not for anyone to decide upon. It is similar to suicide which is morally and logically wrong. The person committing suicide is not in his right mind to decide to end his life. The more if the mother, the victim of rape like Jane Roe for instance, is in his right frame of mind and would choose to kill the fetus just because she does not want the fruit of the rape to be born.
But the other and more stronger argument for me is practical life. In the Philippines, the right to choose abortion is not enshrined in our Constitution. That is why a law needs to be passed to legalize abortion. If the drafters of our Philippine Constitution, who were noble men and men of virtues and upright to the bones did not see the justness and the rationale of instilling the right to choose abortion in our Constitution, then there must have been a very strong reason for doing so. Let us not disturb that fact.
And we are also much aware that women in our country are not as informed and are not as responsible to be given the right to choose. Of course, there are many women who are much more capable of rational and emotional thinking in our country. We have women senators, two women presidents, and many congressional representatives, doctors, lawyers, corporate executives and highly educated professionals. But they are the exception and not the rule.
Many of our young women are low in education, experience, emotional stability, psychological maturity and financial capability to decide whether an abortion is appropriate and how should it be medically performed. Their very lives will be at risk as they choose to end their pregnancies and kill the fetuses in their wombs.
There simply is no chance to choose for many of our women. The circumstances are so restricted that the right of choice is just a figment of the pro-abortionists’ minds. The poverty and lack of education does not present a chance to choose. These poor women could be misled in their decisions to choose abortion. They could go to the wrong doctors who are cheap but untrained and to the unsanitary clinics and even to the quack doctors or hole-in-the-wall abortionists and die of infection, bleeding and other complications.
These women could die in the hands of unscrupulous abortionists. Our conditions simply cannot make abortion as safe as in other advanced countries.
Legalizing abortion is a matter which the Filipinos are not mature enough nor financially nor psychologically prepared to make as a matter of personal choice.
So whatever arguments there are of the pro-abortionists, I will never be persuaded. There is simply no reason in my lifetime that would justify the legalization of abortion in the Philippines.
With or without communion in church for any Catholic, of which I am not because I am a Protestant, I would not favor the law legalizing abortion ever.
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