Abortion: My 1973 Notes After ``Roe vs. Wade'Msgr. George Higgins

   In a recent column I told how and why the AFL-CIO, partly on my advice, voted to remain neutral on the public-policy aspects of the abortion issue. In angry response to that column, two New York readers accused me of "selling out the church."
   They might want to know for the record that Cardinal John O'Connor, the most vocal pro-life member of the U.S. hierarchy of his generation, sent me a cordial letter thanking me for my intervention with the AFL-CIO and expressing satisfaction with the outcome.
   Since these critics have accused me, in effect, of being a liberal, pro-choice advocate, let me further set the record straight by looking back at some notes I jotted down following the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 "Roe vs. Wade" decision.
   Justice Harry Blackmun, who delivered the majority opinion in "Roe vs. Wade," went out of his way in a prefatory note to say he was fully aware of the sensitivity of the abortion controversy. He wrote, "One's philosophy, one's experiences, one's exposure to the raw edges of human existence, one's religious training, one's attitude toward life and family and their values, and the moral standard one establishes and seeks to observe are all likely to influence and color one's thinking and conclusions about abortion."
   As my notes back then indicated, one might have expected Blackmun to have exercised greater restraint in formulating the court's opinion on abortion in light of all this. Instead, by judicial fiat, he imposed upon the states his own "thinking and conclusions."
   One assumed that Blackmun was not surprised by the millions of Americans prepared to do everything within their power and within the law to overturn "Roe vs. Wade." Furthermore, he would not have denied their right to do so. Yet some progressive social reformers and self-styled civil libertarians felt strongly that criticism of the court's abortion decision was completely out of order. They also tried to make the abortion controversy a strictly Catholic issue.
   Shortly after the decision was handed down, a distinguished social reformer and civil libertarian put it this way: "It strikes me as divisive and ungracious ... to hear leaders of institutions long committed to law and order as an ultimate value condemn this ruling in harsh and unseeming language.... The Catholic Church and other critics might better serve society by urging the acceptance of this new law (sic)."
   Many self-styled, liberal social reformers would have agreed. They had a right to express their viewpoint, but I found it extremely offensive that they should attempt to deny others the right to criticize the court's decision and try to overturn it.
   The real point at issue was the often heavy-handed attempt on the part of liberals to silence critics of "Roe vs. Wade." Some seemed to be suggesting that the Supreme Court was the final arbiter of social morality.
   Social reformers who took this position were extremely inconsistent. Many of them fought valiantly to reverse a whole range of pre-Roosevelt court decisions on social and economic issues.
   In any event, they would have to reconcile themselves to the fact that, like it or not, critics of "Roe vs. Wade" had no intention of heading their patronizing advice.
   The inconsistent liberal reformers referred to here didn't have to agree with critics of "Roe vs. Wade" or with some of these critics' tactics. But one hoped that, on sober second thought, they would decide like good civil libertarians to defend the critics' right to form their own consciences. That's what American-style pluralism, by the liberal's own definition, was supposed to mean.

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Abortion: My 1973 Notes After ``Roe vs. Wade''

By Msgr. George G. Higgins

The Yardstick

Aug-13-2001