It’s official: Roe is no more.
Following the leak of a draft opinion authored by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, pro-life advocates had been awaiting the official ruling in a SCOTUS case that they believed would lead to the overturn of Roe.
Those hopes have now come to pass.
Abortion is no longer considered a constitutional right, and the question of legality with regard to the practice has been turned over to individual states to decide. In advance of the ruling, a number of states enacted trigger laws that went into effect as soon as the judgment came down, immediately banning abortion in those states.
As I have said in the past, the overturn of Roe represents the single largest victory for the pro-life movement in five decades. Over 63 million abortions have taken place in America since the 1973 ruling. That is a loss of life that is difficult to comprehend.
While this is certainly a moment of celebration for those who stand on the side of life for the unborn, it does not signify the finish line for pro-life work, even if it is a significant milestone.
In fact, in the aftermath of the ruling, pro-life Christians are grappling with a morally complex landscape that I did not anticipate we would face in my lifetime.
While I can’t offer a definitive solution to those complexities, I believe it’s important for Christians to consider their ramifications and how to best pursue a holistic sense of justice in light of them.
The Moral Complexity of How We Got Here
The United States Supreme Court is not a faceless entity. It is composed of nine justices with particular legal and moral philosophies that guide their rulings. And the justices whose concurring opinions tipped the scales toward Roe’s overturn were appointed by none other than former president Donald Trump.
In response to that reality, some pro-Trump evangelicals have taken the opportunity to publicly dunk on their never-Trumper counterparts, lambasting them for refusing to provide their endorsement for “the most pro-life president in history.”
However, simultaneous with celebration of Roe’s overturn, Americans have also been witness to damning testimony regarding Trump given to the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Just this week, it was revealed by a former White House aid that President Trump knew that his claims of widespread voter fraud during his failed 2020 presidential bid were false, he was aware that a large number of those who sought to come to his January 6 rally were armed, and that he wanted to join the mob at the Capitol Building, even physically assaulting a member of his security team who insisted on taking him back to the White House in light of security concerns.
