Just before his retirement in 1994, Justice Harry Blackmun, author of the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, had a change of heart. He had previously voted in support of capital punishment but later changed his views on the death penalty. “From this day forward,” he said, “I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death.” But he had already tinkered with death quite a bit — and not just with the death penalty. His change of heart was too little, too late.
Dubious Origins
Fifty-one years ago, on January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court published the Roe v. Wade decision, which discovered a “right to abortion” in the Constitution. The origins of this right were shadowy from the start. Blackmun’s opinion relied on the 1965 case Griswold v. Connecticut, which discovered a right to privacy in “penumbras, formed by emanations” from the Bill of Rights. But shadows sufficed for the justices, who found a right to birth control, then a right to abortion seven years later.
This year’s theme, “With Every Mother, For Every Child,” put pregnant women at the event’s center.
Second-wave feminists had been pushing abortion for years by the time the Supreme Court decided Roe. Betty Friedan, author of the seminal feminist text The Feminine Mystique, had helped establish the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) in 1969. Gloria Steinem, too, had been promoting abortion as an issue of female autonomy. Roe delivered a victory to feminists, spurring the further liberalization of abortion laws in some states under the guise of women’s rights. (RELATED: Eleven States to Vote on Abortion in 2024)
Of course, Roe was based on a lie. For all the court’s discussion of constitutional rights, it had neglected to consider the rights of the unborn child. Blackmun’s opinion established a trimester framework for state abortion laws: states could not regulate during the first trimester, could only enact regulations related to maternal health in the second trimester, and could regulate or entirely prohibit abortions in the third trimester. In other words, states could independently determine whether or not an unborn child’s right to life would be recognized.
Pro-Life Activists Mount Opposition to Roe
On the first anniversary of Roe, pro-life activists organized the first March for Life. Organizers held a rally and march around the Capitol, and participants lobbied their representatives to support pro-life legislation. Originally planned as a one-time event, the March for Life organizers soon realized the need for an annual event, held each year on or around the anniversary of the Roe decision.
Fifty years after the first March for Life, pro-lifers descended on Washington, D.C. for the first month after Roe’s death. Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in the 2022 case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization had finally set the record straight: “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.” This year’s March for Life was the second since Dobbs, but Roe’s ghost still lingers.
During the fifty years of Roe’s reign, more than 63 million children were murdered in the United States — over one million lives lost each year, or 3,452 lives per day. It’s an unfathomably huge number. The most palpable effect of Roe’s abortion regime is perhaps an absence — all the sons and daughters who were never born, the brothers and sisters never known, the mothers and fathers left wounded by abortion’s aftermath. With liberal abortion laws in states across the nation, the death toll still rises, even though Roe is gone.
Roe’s ghost still animates feminism, which continues to claim the mantle of “women’s health” while cashing in on an industry built on lying to women and killing their children. And if pro-lifers are dismayed at the long road ahead for the protection of unborn life in states across America, there is even more work needed to undo feminism.
The March for Life seems to be tackling both head on. This year’s theme, “With Every Mother, For Every Child,” put pregnant women at the event’s center, highlighting the pro-life movement’s exceptional record of caring for expectant mothers and their children. Maligned by the mainstream media, pregnancy resource centers offer an essential alternative to the Left’s abortion regime. This year, the March’s organizers created a database of gift registries for pregnancy resource centers across the nation, allowing March participants to support the non-profits in their service to mothers and children.
Though Roe is no more, there’s no guarantee that America mends its ways. Eleven states will vote on pro-abortion ballot initiatives this coming election, further elevating the high stakes of November 5. Pro-abortion activists continue to tell women that their personal worth, career successes, and chances at equality all depend on the ability to kill a child in utero. It’s hard to chart out a path to victory from here.
But until the legacy of Roe has been eradicated and justice served, pro-life Americans from coast to coast will rally on the National Mall and make their way by the Capitol and Supreme Court. Sobered by loss but buoyed by hope, we wait for the old order to pass away.
Mary Frances Myler is a writer from Northern Michigan now living in Washington, D.C. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022.
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