Science has moved past the flawed understandings that underpinned Roe. The leaked draft of Dobbs suggests the Court now understands this.
Science has moved past the flawed understandings that underpinned Roe. The leaked draft of Dobbs suggests the Court now understands this.
T he unthinkable has happened: an unprecedented leak from the depths of the Supreme Court. The public reaction has been fierce and unbridled over Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion, especially on the pro-abortion left. But the reality is that if Roe falls, the sky will remain safely overhead. What will happen is that, from state to state, citizens and their elected officials, participating in the democratic process, will be allowed to pass laws that make sense to them. No longer inhibited by a decades-old decision from seven Supreme Court justices, our nation’s political bodies will be able to write and enact laws that reflect modern science and current American sensibilities about unborn children.
So much has changed since 1973, when pro-abortion arguments focused on the inability to pin down exactly when life begins and when abortion defenders confidently held that fetuses in the later stages of gestation could not feel the pain of dismemberment. As explained in a friend-of-the-court brief I submitted alongside two other female physicians, scientific advancements since Roe have put an end to uncertainties about such questions.
Justice Harry Blackmun, writing for the majority in Roe, included this memorable line: “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.” At that point “in the development of man’s knowledge,” he added, there was simply no consensus about this issue. That was barely true in 1973, and it’s clearly false now. Indeed, advancements in my own field of fetal ultrasound have brought the adorable reality of clearly living, clearly human unborn children to life for all Americans. We see black-and-white proof of this on the refrigerators and phone screens of proud grandmas everywhere. In examining rooms, real-time ultrasound images reveal beautifully formed babies sucking their thumbs or grasping their toes to awed and delighted parents. And 3-D and 4-D ultrasound images allow family members to recognize familiar features on the faces of tiny babies that won’t see the light of day for months.
Consider the incredibly advanced development of a 15-week-old fetus that my colleagues and I detailed in our brief: “At 15 weeks the baby’s head, starting with the brain, is a marvel of intricacy. The brain’s large frontal lobes, ventricles and thalamus fill most of the space. The fetal profile is clear; the gently sloping nose, the distinct upper and lower lips and chin.” Lungs that practice breathing, kidneys that filter urine, hearts with four distinct chambers and working valves, joints that flex, and feet with tiny toes — all present and all very human. It is at 15 weeks that the Mississippi law in question in Dobbs proposes that babies be protected from elective termination. It is also at 15 weeks that my own state of Florida has chosen to limit elective abortion in a recently signed law.
In his draft opinion, Justice Alito details the American public’s current relationship with the unborn, writing: “Many people now have a new appreciation of fetal life and . . . when prospective parents who want to have a child view a sonogram, they typically have no doubt that what they see is their daughter or son.” Our growing appreciation of the moral status of the fetus as a son or daughter has been brought about, in large part, by our ability to see them so well in utero through ultrasound. It is probably what drove President Biden’s unscripted reference to a woman’s choice to abort “a child.” No matter how stridently he tries to reduce the issue to one of an individual woman’s choice or autonomy, the human being at the center of the controversy stubbornly remains the one moving silently in the darkness of the womb.
Indeed, if Roe falls, the sky will still be overhead where it belongs. The difference will be that for the first time in 49 years, decision-making power on this issue will reside in the states, so state regulations can reflect what the public’s moral sense dictates today, in 2022. Not every state would extend its protection to these vulnerable members of the human race, but at least every state will have the opportunity to address these weighty issues and come to a consensus. And we can hope that the endearing and now quite visible humanity of the unborn will make a strong claim on the hearts and sympathies of the American people.