Roe v. Wade (Part I)

A Bloody Religion

Roe v. Wade (1973) is the infamous decision of the US Supreme Court legalising abortion in the United States.  The reasoning behind the decision has been scrutinised, ridiculed and rejected ever since.  Harold O J Brown, in an article entitled "Legal Aspects of the Right to Life"  reviews the reasoning of the judicial majority.

The first reason offered by the Court to justify their decision is this: the Supreme Court rejected the Hippocratic oath, claiming it was irrelevant.  This oath traditionally defined the duty of the medical profession to "do no harm".  It had hitherto been applied by the profession to the abortion of children.  It was understood and interpreted to require an explicit refusal to perform or even advise an abortion.  But in a magisterial overreach, the Court ruled that the Hippocratic Oath was irrelevant.  On what grounds, you may ask?

The grounds on which the ancient oath was rejected by today's Court were first of all that it came from a very narrow sect of Greek thought, and that it was not representative of the best classical opinion. . . . Roe v. Wade follows historian Ludwig Edelstein in attributing the origin of the oath to the sect of Pythagoras, which, it says, was not representative. . . . Of course the oath had no great impact in the pagan Roman Empire until Christianity began to win out.  Then it was accepted because it coincided with the teachings of Christianity.  As long as the oath represented a minority view, the Court felt, it need not be accepted because the view was that of the minority.  When it became a majority view it was still not authoritative for us, because it was the view of a "sectarian" majority, namely the Christians. 

This is the thinking that underlies the Roe v. Wade decision and quite a few other decisions.  If we hold such a view we can guarantee that the one moral code that will never be enforced in the United States is the biblical, because even if a majority of our people support it, it is a "sectarian" view.  [Harold O J Brown, Thou Shalt Not Kill, ed. by Richard L. Ganz (New Rochelle: Arlington House Publishers, 1978), p. 118f]

Way back in 1973--forty years ago--we see the teeth of secularism bared.  Christianity was a sect.  Define "sect".  Anything that is not secular.  Circular reasoning at its idiotic worst.  Even if 99.99 percent of the population were Christian, and therefore opposed to abortion or anything else, in the view of the Court, their views would be sectarian and, therefore, non-admissible. 

What is revealing here is the necessary pre-supposition upon which such reasoning rests.  There is only one absolute and correct view: the secularist view--which is not a "view" or mere "opinion"--it is absolute truth.  Way back in 1976, the Court was drawing upon secularism as the absolute religion, the established religion of the United States of America.  All other views were sectarian and therefore not admissible because heretical, regardless of what proportion of the population they represented. 

It is the religion of secular humanism which has produced the mass slaughter of the innocents.  To that established official religion of the United States the full blame and responsibility must be sheeted home.