Roe’s Days Are Numbered

I t has been 49 years since Roe v. Wade was decided. Forty-nine years of unborn lives lost. But I am hopeful that the next 49 years will not be like the last.

A few months ago, my wife, Makenze, gave birth to our son, Theodore. The nine-month journey to his birth gave us plenty of moments that served to heighten our excitement about his arrival. There were the announcements to family and friends, baby showers, and hours spent getting his nursery just right. But what truly captured our hearts were the sounds and images. Within a few short weeks of discovering that Makenze was pregnant, we got to hear our son’s heartbeat. Then came the ultrasound, where we saw, for the first time, our baby boy move. Hearing the heartbeat and seeing the sonogram served as powerful testaments to how precious life is, even in the womb.

In 1973, the year Roe was decided, most Americans did not have the benefit of this technology. Ultrasound equipment was not widespread and produced grainy snapshots that were hardly representative of life in the womb.

Since then, technology has advanced dramatically. Mothers and fathers now have access to color-filled, three-dimensional images of their children, humanizing those whom some would callously describe as clumps of cells.

Science has also produced numerous revelations about a child’s development in the womb. Science has shown that a baby’s heart begins beating around week six. Kidneys, liver, and lungs are forming around week seven. Unique fingerprints form around week 13. The baby can suck her thumb, yawn, stretch, and make faces around week 15. All this confirms what we instinctively know to be true: that there are two lives at issue in every abortion.

Public opinion has shifted to reflect this truth. A total of 67 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be illegal in all (19 percent) or under certain circumstances (48 percent); only 17 percent believe that abortion should be allowed at any point in a pregnancy; and laws in a growing number of states now recognize that dismemberment abortions, in which a living child is pulled limb from limb from his mother’s womb, constitute the very essence of barbarism.

Live dismemberment abortions have no place in a just and humane society. That is why my office, for over two years, has defended Kentucky’s law banning this practice. We have done so despite being told by a federal appeals court that we could not defend the ban. Our resolve took us to the United States Supreme Court, where we recently won — in an 8-to-1 decision — the right to continue our defense.

Our federal Constitution as written and originally understood includes no right to an abortion. This issue belonged to the states before Roe, and it should belong to the states again. For more than a century, the United States Supreme Court has recognized that states possess inherent authority to promote the safety, health, and welfare of their people. In exercising that authority, all 50 states have legislated on abortion. In fact, over 40 states protect life and prohibit some abortions after a specified point in pregnancy, and nearly that number require abortions to be performed by licensed physicians.

The Mississippi law at issue in Dobbs prohibits abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Mississippians should be able to pass laws that regulate abortion and protect the health and safety of their women and children. This is a debate that should occur in statehouses rather than courthouses, with voices expressed through elected representatives rather than through retained attorneys.

Kentucky’s own history further illustrates why the people, through their elected representatives, should govern abortion. Before Roe, Kentucky protected babies and banned abortion at all stages of pregnancy, except where necessary to preserve the life of the mother. This law survived challenges in state and federal court, with Kentucky’s high court — just three months before Roe was decided — unanimously rejecting a challenge that was identical to the challenge sustained in Roe. In a later decision, Kentucky’s justices lamented what Roe had “compelled” them to do: overturn a unanimous decision made mere months earlier.

Roe’s days are numbered. That very thought has been made possible by the men, women, and children who make up the pro-life movement. It is a movement built upon 49 years of courage and conviction and one that has spawned a pro-life generation.

Abortion should be returned to the states. Roe should be stopped from turning 50.