‘Abortion and the Court’

Your editorial “Abortion and the Court” (Jan. 15) describes Roe vs. Wade as representing “sound social policy, settled law and the innate good sense of the American public.” I contest all three points.

As advantageous and timely as a right to privacy may be, when it is interpreted and applied to the point of an individualism that is permitted to supersede marital and familial obligations, whether to one’s present or potential spouse or one’s present or potential children, such a “right” becomes destructive to the family as a social institution and of the individual’s sense of obligation to others. That is hardly a sound social policy.

While the doctrine of stare decisis is integral to a society’s stability and, presumably therefore, its welfare, the presupposition for invoking that doctrine is that the law in question is a good one. Sixteen years of repeated efforts to overturn Roe vs. Wade seem to imply that it is far from settled that it is good law.

The problem with appealing to the innate “good sense” of any group of people is that most significant moral truths are complex enough to be confused, misunderstood or unrecognized. History is full of examples of peoples as a whole who were blind, tragically so, to truths we presently take for granted. The alleged natural aptitude of certain racial or cultural groups for subjugation or for contaminating the genetic purity of superior groups are recent examples of moral distortion whose impact we still feel.

This last point leads to a positive suggestion. Given the need to educate an increasingly polarized society to the values of human life and family, perhaps the best approach is to begin by allocating our public funds and services for the preservation, in place of the destruction, of life--such as Missouri’s statute seems to be doing. Subsidize maternity care and counseling, provide it free to rape victims--basically, work in the direction of eliminating the perception that pregnancies need to be terminated. Good sense often is not “innate;” it, too, needs to be “born,” through education.

REV. THOMAS C. ANSLOW

Dean of Academics

St. John’s Seminary College

Camarillo