Roe v. Wade Overturned: Now What?

Well, welcome to Focus on the Family.

I'm Jim Daly here in the studio on Friday, recording this for you to hear on Monday. We've just learned this morning the news of the historic announcement from the Supreme Court that has overturned Roe v. Wade. That's after 49 years and 63 million children not here today because of abortion. No court has the right to deprive a child of the right to live, and I think that's been surfacing over the years, especially with technology that shows that this is an individual human being. Somehow they wanted to convince you it's just a clump of cells up until the ninth month, and then boom, out comes a baby. That is a baby from the beginning, and this has been the debate.

Can we take innocent human life because of its inconvenience? And the answer is no, and today the court has agreed with that. Now, this decision has really just pushed it back to the states. I don't know what you're going to hear from the pro-abortion community, but the radical position that they take that this somehow is going to prevent a woman in a blue state, for example, to get an abortion is just not true. It does create the opportunity for the Christian community to step up in red states, blue states, to help women, and that will be the plan going forward, and FOCUS is going to be involved in that. Also, the support of pregnancy resource centers around the nation.

We work closely with them, and we are grateful for their hard work as well. Today, I've invited two good friends, scholars, to join me and talk about this decision, its impact. I have on the phone Professor Helen Alvarez and Dr. Al Mohler. Professor Alvarez is a law professor at George Mason University, where she teaches family law, law and religion, and property law. Dr. Al Mohler is an evangelical leader serving as the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he's an esteemed authority on these issues, and a former Focus on the Family board member. Professor Alvarez, Dr. Al Mohler, thanks for being with us here at FOCUS. Dr. Helen Alvarez Thank you so much. Dr. Al Mohler It's good to be with you. Dr. Darrell Bock Well, we've recorded with both of you before on legal and theological issues, and I just so appreciate two leading thinkers giving us time to talk this through.

Helen, let me start with you. Explain to our listeners what the Supreme Court ruling on the Dobbs case means, and how does it affect abortion policy going forward? Dr. Helen Alvarez Prior to Dobbs, in 1973 in Roe, and then repeated in 1992 in Casey, the Supreme Court had held that the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, the word liberty, contains a right to abortion throughout nine months and for any reason.

When the Constitution protects that right, that means states cannot impair it. So states were essentially banned from protecting unborn human lives. As of today, the court says that Casey and Roe, and I think I can use this word, are nonsensical, that they're not even legal reasoning, according to the Dobbs majority opinion.

They were a mess, confusing, unworkable, wrong about the text of the Constitution, about the history of the law in the United States, and about the prior cases they claim to rely on. So as of today, moving forward, every state is permitted, once again, to make laws about abortion. Some will protect it, some will protect unborn human life at least some or all times during pregnancy. Dr. Tom Bilyeu Well, I so appreciate that reference to nonsensical because I think on the pro-life side, that's been the claim all along.

It's hard to defend women when half the abortions are women, you know, that are the abortions being done against. Dr. Mohler, let's get you in here. I so appreciate you making time for this. You're one of our leading theologians in this country. Professor Alvaray, obviously, is bringing that legal perspective.

How are you feeling today with the news of Roe being overturned? Professor Alvaray Well, Jim, you know, we've been working at this for a very long time. So I have to put this within the context of God's mercy, and just say, this is the day the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it. As a Christian, we understand this is the beginning of an even bigger battle. But we've, by God's grace, earned the right to enter those battles at the congressional level, where it will undoubtedly have to be fought out in all 50 states.

But I appreciate so much Professor Alvaray on this. And you know, the reality is that Justice Alito got right to the heart of the issue when he wrote that from the day Roe v. Wade was handed down, it was on a collision course with the Constitution. And you know, as a Christian theologian, and as a constitutionalist, I just want to point out that every wrong method of treating the scripture has a parallel in a wrong method of dealing with the Constitution. And, you know, liberal theology has, has basically abandoned the scripture and liberal jurisprudence sought basically to abandon the Constitution.

The majority of the court pulled us right back to the text of the Constitution. And for that, we should be very thankful. That is good. And it's, again, to your point, it's a day to rejoice.

The work is not over. That's one of the concerns I've had. This simply puts it back in the hands of all the states. So if you think about the spiritual battleground, now it goes from a federal level to a state level. And boy, we as the Christian community really have to redouble our efforts to help women, to help the men involved in their lives, as well as the children, so that I would hope eventually, even if Congress tries to develop a law that gives a woman the right to an abortion in the future, that this event will create the desire not to do that, that the immorality of taking a child's life because of finances or whatever, that it's never worth it to murder a child for the benefit of that person's future. So let me talk a bit about that to both of you.

And you both can respond, the negative reaction. We're taping this on Friday. We're going to be airing it today, Monday.

Not sure what's going to take place over the weekend. You have Jane's Revenge and these other groups that are threatening, you know, to do damage and to riot, which seems to be their only means of expression, unfortunately. Let me play a clip from Speaker Pelosi and get your reaction to her. This morning, the radical Supreme Court is eviscerating Americans' rights and endangering their health and safety. But the Congress will continue to act to overcome this extremism and protect the American people. Today, the Republican-controlled Supreme Court has achieved their dark, extreme goal of ripping away a woman's right to make their own reproductive health decisions. American women today have less freedom than their mothers. With Roe and their attempt to destroy it, radical Republicans are charging ahead with their crusade to criminalize health freedom.

Al, let's go to you first. Your response to that rationale, that this is an extreme moment, that the judges are extreme. How do you react to that? Well, they're so extreme, they're in line with the 187 years of American jurisprudence before Roe v. Wade. In other words, the progressives in this great cultural divide, I think just assuming they're honest, they honestly believe that human rights are invented by human beings to be politically negotiated to whatever extreme you can politically get away with. And then, you know, their understanding is that history is unfolding so that the next thing you know, from abortion, LGBTQ rights, especially the T and all the rest, don't forget the plus sign at the end of that. This is a court decision that just effectively refutes the entire logic of their case.

So I guess predictably, they're pretty upset. Right. And I think, Helen, for me, that use of the word extreme, it seems odd that for us, the pro-life community trying to preserve life, encourage a mother to get through her pregnancy, to make the right decision, a decision she'll never regret, in my opinion, that somehow we're the extremists because we don't support the killing of children. Maybe you can explain that to me. You're in Washington.

You hang out at the dinner parties. How is that? That is a political partisan statement that is, and it's so far removed from the question of the humanity, that mother and that child in an abortion facility. It is so far removed from the opinion itself, which is a product of 49 years of fabulous scholarship. The pro-life movement didn't sit around and stamp its feet and say, you're so bad. Why can't you see the unborn child is valuable?

They wrote books and had symposia and wrote amicus briefs and scholarly articles. And this is the fruit of them. And they're true. To actually say truthful things like, if liberty in the constitution is the American experience and all the laws that were passed in the states and what they show about who we are, then a country that banned abortion for 200 years doesn't include it as a liberty. Reason. Reason and truth are beautiful. And that opinion, if you read it with that view, is that. I feel happy because I saw something true and because someone is actually reading the constitution as if it was the people's document and it doesn't just belong to five justices. Yeah. So, so good.

Dr. Mohler, let me turn to you. You recently cited new data from the Guttmacher Institute that indicates abortion has been on the rise in recent years after a 30 year decline. In fact, the New York Times reported in 2020 that one in five pregnancies were ending in abortion.

That's a shocking number. How do you think the court's decision will impact those numbers? Are we going to see fewer abortions, obviously, or will these blue states that like Colorado, I'm sad to say our home state, they want to be an abortion tourist destination. So what do you think the outcome will be? Well, in one sense, I think we're going to find ourselves in two Americas, but it's going to be more like three.

And so this is my analysis. I think there are others who would clearly agree with it. There are some deeply blue states, Illinois, Rhode Island, California, Massachusetts, you know, that are going to be abortion destinations. I mean, Gavin Newsom in California is talking about paying women to come to California to have abortions paid for by the state. You go to a state like Alabama, it's the opposite.

State like Mississippi, from which the Dobbs case came, or a state like Louisiana, where even the Democratic governor actually voted for a restriction on abortion just to recent days. So those are two different Americas. But there's a third America. And that third America includes states and I put Colorado a bit there, where it's still possible to look at potential restrictions on abortion, but we've got a long way to go to get to any elimination of abortion.

One thing we can do, we can be there to foster children, adopt children, do whatever we can to help mothers in crisis. And so the political battles is going to be very uneven. And I do divide it into that trio, the deep blue states that I think make it even bluer the deep red states that may get even redder in that sense. And then at least somewhere between 10 and 20 states, where this is going to be an ongoing battle from year to year, but I don't want to take too much time here. But the bigger issue, I think the President today, and Speaker Pelosi made very clear that they want to push for national legislation. And ultimately, I think both sides know, that's where the big debate will head.

Right. And Helen, from a legal perspective, when you look at that, that's kind of what the court has often said, especially the originalists, the court should not get involved in these deep social issues, the legislative branch should determine a law, and if possible, pass that law, then it'll be challenged. And then the court will look at it to say, is that law that Congress passed? Is it constitutional? That's kind of how the government is supposed to work. And this is one of the difficulties that we've had, where the progressives have used the court often, to get laws through, in essence, get laws through, through court regulations.

Is that fair? Yes, but I want to sound a note of hope, and it is about the feds. States have legislative authority that's called the police power, any law for health, safety, welfare.

They used to also say morals, but that kind of went by. So any law in that area, the states can do. The federal legislative branch, Article 1 of the Constitution, gives supposedly pretty limited powers to a federal Congress.

Most were reserved to the states. The feds can do things like interstate commerce, you know, raise and support an army, tax and spend, take care of federal lands. So they can't actually pass a law that just says abortion is legal in the 50 states, because it doesn't fit any of those Article 1 powers.

But here's what they can do, and you've seen them do. They can claim that something they're doing affects interstate commerce. Oh, abortion affects interstate commerce, we're going to make a law about something on abortion that affects interstate commerce. We're going to give federal money to the states, but not unless you allow unlimited abortion. We're going to let federal contractors build planes, you know, supply health care, but not if you don't provide free abortion for all your employees. We're going to make sure that every federal land has an abortion clinic on it. They're going to go nuts with the Article 1 powers they have. They can't straightforwardly legalize abortion in the 50 states.

But they can use all these Article 1 powers and they can slip through various, you know, suppose limits in them. And, and again, think of how what a sick agenda this is, instead of all the things this country needs right now, we're going to be take our Article 1 powers and slip abortion in wherever we can. Again, when you think about the abortion process itself, it's a sick agenda.

And it's so dismaying in that regard. Let me Dr. Mole, you mentioned President Biden, and again, to Helen's point, you know, this is a moral issue in the public square, plenty of people are upset. If you lean toward that direction, we get it, you don't need to write us, we understand that you think it's a political issue, we disagree, we think it's a moral issue in the public square. That's why we fight it. It's also why I recorded for our see life event piece with former Democrat Dan Lipinski from Illinois, who's a pro life Catholic, and he lost his seat because he wouldn't budge being a pro life Democrat. So I get it. We're in the fight every day. I understand it. I wish it weren't political. I wish there are more Democrats that were pro life. But pointing now to President Biden and a clip that we got from today, his speech, I wanted to play this and get both of your responses.

Make no mistake. This decision is a culmination of a deliberate effort over decades, upset balance of our law. It's a realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court. In my view, the court has done what is never done before, expressly take away a constitutional right that is so fundamental to so many Americans that had already been recognized.

The course decision to do so will have real and immediate consequences. State laws banning abortion are automatically taking effect today, jeopardizing the health of millions of women, some without exceptions. So extreme the women could be punished for protecting their health. So extreme the women and girls who are forced to bear their rapist child. Now let me let me go to you on the response first, because one of the things that I've seen when I'm engaging the pro abortion community, they go to this 1% of rape. So 1% roughly of abortions occurred due to rape. And the other 99 98% of abortions is more of a birth control decision.

They have an unwanted pregnancy. So if you could just elaborate on that for a minute, you know, trying to prove the normality through the extreme, you know that it's always rape in their minds. Yeah, you know, this is where the argument was made by the feminists in the late 60s, in the early 70s, some of them go so far as to argue that, like Andrea Dworkin that, you know, any marital act is an act of rape. But basically, it's an effort to try to deny how abortion actually happens in this country. And the vast number of abortions performed simply because a woman no longer wants to be pregnant. And then, you know, what are presented as the hard cases of rape, incest, you know, etc. But, you know, every state regardless, frankly, of exactly how the law is framed, there are ways of legal redress, there are there are judges and others who can deal with issues of extremity. But you know, I'm just thankful the American people, at least millions of Americans have seen through that kind of argument.

Absolutely. And that that's really the point to use that extreme to explain the other 98 99%. Dr. Mohler, let me ask you, you he used the word child, he's kind of breaking from the ranks. Democrats always refer to the preborn child as a fetus, a blob of tissue, etc. He seems to be consistently referring to the baby in the womb as a child.

I'm not sure that he understands he's not speaking from the talking points. But in that regard, have you noticed that? Yeah, it's a moral reflex, isn't it? I mean, this is the this is creation order, natural law, just the imago de showing up in the fact that we eventually just have to acknowledge that it's not just a moral truth held by pro livers. It's a moral truth period that the inhabitant of the womb is an unborn child, a human being made in the image of God. And that's the word child pops out. Remember, they've been trying to get away from talking about pregnant women. They've been trying to talk about pregnant people because of the transgender revolution. And the White House actually, you know, as a style guide, they're just supposed to talk about pregnant people.

But you know, when you're going after voters, you don't go after pregnant people, you go after voting women. So I just I just found that very interesting. We do need to keep a script and keep a memory on this.

Yeah. Helen, it's right at the end here. So I just want to ask kind of kind of an open question to you as you're a law professor. What do you think the future is? What would you encourage both the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church? What do we do? How do we move forward?

How do we get into discussions with people? Yeah, I'll make one broad point. Obviously, I think all of the effort to welcome women being able to bring children into the world and to make them feel that they they can do justice to the child justice to their financial necessity, etc.

crucial. But I think that the right of abortion has been sold on the right of autonomy, the right just to make my own decisions, whatever. I think that reinstating the idea that we are in relationship first, we are first God's children, and then we are brothers and sisters to one another, and that we owe one another, I do think that all of those things are going to have to be theologically and morally and philosophically and culturally affirmed. Autonomy is going to it's going to be help that we can provide if we don't do that. Yeah.

Dr. Mohler, let me pitch this to you and get your response and same open question. How do we move forward? But I was at a pro-life event not long ago, a woman was on the podium and she said, you know, the Judeo-Christian ethos is that Christ showed us that we were to love the Lord, our God with all of our heart, soul and mind and to love our neighbor, and that the greatest sacrifice a person could make is to lay their life down for another. And she turned that on the abortion issue and said, now, we are asking the baby to lay its life down for the mother.

And it's a real twist on the Christian ethic of how you give and sacrifice to where it becomes somewhat selfish. And I know these women are in difficult circumstances, and Helen's right, we've got to do all we can to help them. But that idea that you terminate the life of a baby because of financial difficulty or something like that, my mom was in that spot. She thought about aborting me. And I'm so thankful I was born to a poor white family in Compton, California.

You know, I was able to climb out. And who has the right to say to somebody, you can't live because you don't have enough in your bank account? How more absurd could a country become? You know, Jim, the gift of life, I think it's just deeply theological. It's intuitive because God made us in his image. So actually, people who wouldn't even claim any religious identity, I think clearly the vestige of that moral knowledge is there. But, you know, in a society that's increasingly secularizing, and, and I think Professor Alveri is exactly right, you know, worshiping autonomy, abortion becomes almost sacramental. The gift of life is consistent throughout any civilization that survives, you know, the understanding that every single human life is precious and is to be defended. And abortion is not just about the numbers of babies aborted every year.

It's about the moral corruption of the American heart and mind in such a way that makes all life diminished and expendable and contingent. And so I just look at this today and I say, look, I believe the final word has to be praise and honor to God, who vindicated his own truth, his own glory and his own gift of life in this decision today. And for that, I'm just very grateful. We've got to turn to a bigger battle tomorrow and that battle's joined. But I really thank God for the, the wonderful gift of this decision today.

Yeah. And in that spirit, Al, could I ask you to just end this time together? I'm so grateful, Helen, for your time out of Washington and for you, Al, traveling on the road in Chicago. Could I ask you to pray for this country? Pray for those that don't see it our way and pray for us to do the job that needs to be done. It would be my great honor, Jim.

Thank you. Dear Heavenly Father, we come in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to recognize you as the author and giver of life and all good things. Father, we thank you for the gift of life. We thank you for this Supreme Court decision today. We thank you that you care about the ways that human beings and human societies organize themselves.

We're thankful that you're not distant from history. But Father, we claim this for your glory today as a vindication of the sanctity of human life. And Father, we recognize the limits of a society that denies you and recognizing anything as ultimately precious and infinitely worthy and indeed sacred. But Father, we pray for those women who right now may be struggling with abortion.

We pray for those who may be outraged at this decision. Father, I pray that somehow the truth may break through to some of them that they've been holding onto an argument that simply is not credible and does not honor you. Father, I pray that your church will be shown to be faithful in ministering to women and others in need. Father, I pray that we will show the world what it means to welcome every single life, every single life, regardless of age, condition, status of life in such a way that we honor you by honoring life. And Father, I just pray that your people will show up faithful, and we pray for your providence and grace to this nation, even in coming days with threats of violence and all the rest. Father, we commit all this to you, thanking you for the honor of having this conversation today and just looking forward to the battle ahead. And Father, may we as Christians recognize that if it's worth fighting, it's because the battle is the Lord's. It's in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that we pray. Amen.

Amen. Dr. Mohler, thank you for that prayer. And I hope that the Lord answers every bit of it, especially opening the eyes of those who don't see abortion the way we see it. And we are here at Focus going to continue to fight for that preborn child. You know, the way we've done that the past 18 years is through Option Ultrasound.

We've equipped pregnancy resource centers with 3D, 4D ultrasound machines. And by doing so, we know that it costs $60 to save a baby's life. We've hit almost a half a million babies saved through that program. And I want to invite you at this moment in our culture to be a part of the solution. As we move forward, we're going to continue to save children and help women. And one of the ways you can do that today is your statement that I'm going to stand for life is to provide a $60 gift for Focus so that we can together save a baby's life. Jean and I do it every month, and that's something we've committed to.

Maybe you would consider that as well. The bottom line is we're going to have to do so much more as we move forward. It's not just the ultrasound solution, but we're going to get engaged with pregnancy resource centers to help them be the hero in their community, hopefully through job training and job placement for these women and maybe their boyfriends or husbands, so we can help them not only make the right decision for life, but lead them into a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Wouldn't that be great? And we're looking forward to the Lord using this opportunity to not only lift up the great value of life, but to kind of bring shalom, God's peace, to these families that are in chaos. And to do so, you can contact us here at Focus on the Family. Call 1-800-232-6459. That's 1-800, the letter A and the word family, or see the links in the episode notes. And from everyone here at Focus on the Family, let's praise the Lord together for the answer to this 49 year struggle with Roe versus Wade. God bless you. We'll see you next time.