Ernest Hemingway once observed that bankruptcy comes gradually, then suddenly. The same can be said of death. And as it turns out, Roe vs Wade. Roe’s demise came just shy of its 50th birthday. Having survived decades of legal challenges, it wasn’t all that long ago that Roe seemed untouchable. And then somehow, a much-maligned single-term president was able to appoint three constitutionalists to the Supreme Court—which changed everything. Hallelujah! 

The world was given an unsanctioned sneak peak two months ago, but it wasn’t until yesterday that we could finally let out our collective breath. Roe is no more. That doesn’t mean abortion is going away anytime soon. It will still be legal in most of the states where most abortions occur, but—in the words of the new Top Gun—it is the first miracle. You only need observe the unhinged fury of the ruling class to realize what a truly miraculous outcome this is. Miraculous, yet dangerous—as evidenced by the vandalism and violence that now surround us.

Nevermind what you may have heard over the last 24 hours, it is not the Supreme Court’s job to acquiesce to the will of the people—let alone the demands of angry mobs or would-be assassins. The truth is, if the Court had simply stayed in their proverbial lane 50 years ago, we would never have been in this mess to begin with. Joshua Prager’s new book, The Family Roe, is not an easy or pleasant read, but it does reveal that Justice Harry Blackmun—who authored Roe—had a personal interest in legalizing abortion and did what was necessary to make it happen. That’s not how the judiciary is supposed to operate. The Court is supposed to protect and enforce the constitution, not unilaterally redefine it. Plenty of honest abortion advocates admit that this is precisely what Roe did—including the Notorious RBG. At an NYU lecture, Ginsburg declared that a “less encompassing Roe” would have been far more appropriate and efficacious—one which didn’t “displace virtually every state law then in force.” Alan Dershowitz, who "strongly support(s) a woman's right to choose,” calls Roe v. Wade “a disaster." At best, it was a massive overreach. At worst, it was an end-justifies-the-means gaming of the system. Justice Samuel Alito, in yesterday’s Dobbs opinion, writes:

Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives…. Roe was on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided, Casey perpetuated its errors, and those errors do not concern some arcane corner of the law of little importance to the American people. Rather, wielding nothing but "raw judicial power," the Court usurped the power to address a question of profound moral and social importance that the Constitution unequivocally leaves for the people." 

The activist jurists who perpetrated Roe assumed it would settle the abortion debate once and for all. So did the abortion industry. They were wrong. Instead of creating consensus or closure, Roe put us in a sort of 50-year holding pattern—and claimed more than 60 million unborn lives in the process, along with two generations of missing children and grandchildren. A massively disproportionate number of American abortion victims have been black, brown, and poor. So ask yourself this. Has 50 years of aborting their progeny, at five times the rate of whites, elevated the black community? Or has it simply subsidized an epidemic of fatherlessness and perpetuated a legacy of subservience?

Vice President Harris released a statement yesterday decrying the reversal of Roe. It consisted of 140 words but made no mention of abortion. Instead it employed a half-dozen cherished euphemisms: health care, reproductive care, Constitutional right, liberty, freedom, self-determination, your rights. None of those things were actually lost yesterday—only the federal protection of that which must not be named. Kamala Harris is understandably ashamed of abortion. She is ashamed of what it is and what it does. Why else would she not deign to even mention it by name? Ditto for the Twitter account of Joe Biden:

This fall, we must elect more senators and representatives who will codify a woman’s right to choose into a federal law. We need to elect more state leaders to protect this right at the local level. We need to restore the protections of Roe as the law of the land.

We need to “codify a woman’s right to choose” what?! We need to “protect this right” to do what?! We need to “restore the protections” of what?! Again, no mention is made of the one and only issue that’s actually at stake: abortion. And even the term abortion sells the carnage short. What is abortion? It is the intentional killing of a tiny human being. It is the tearing apart of a helpless unborn child through surgical or medical means. It is Uvalde without the guns—on an exponentially larger scale. The reason we are rightly outraged by the murder of young children, more so than the murder of adults, is precisely because young children are more vulnerable and helpless. Why, then, do we flip this equation on its head when it comes to abortion? Why do we decry the murder of children when it’s perpetrated by a psychopath with a firearm but celebrate it when it’s performed by a “medical professional” with a curette?

Michelle Obama is heartbroken that we’ve gone back to a time “when women risked losing their lives getting illegal abortions.” How many women died from illegal abortion prior to Roe? In 1972, it was 39. Michelle Obama is also heartbroken “for the teenage girl … who won’t be able to finish school … because her state controls her reproductive decisions.” How many states control when and with whom teenage girls have sex? That would be zero. More to the point, what percentage of U.S. abortions are performed on teen girls? Less than 9%. Michelle Obama is further heartbroken “for the mother of a nonviable pregnancy who is now forced to bring that pregnancy to term.” What percentage of abortions involve serious fetal anomaly? No more than 1%.

As per usual, Michelle Obama’s entire argument for abortion is built on fringe cases which pull at our heartstrings but don’t represent abortion in the main. Unless her position is that abortion should only be legal in cases of fetal anomaly or teen pregnancy, why does she appeal to such circumstances at all? If she truly believes that all abortions should be legal because there’s nothing wrong with abortion, then it’s dishonest to argue as she does. And why isn’t Michelle Obama heartbroken for the 60 million lives who’ve literally been sacrificed during this medical holocaust? Lila Rose points out that children conceived in rape or poverty, or born with disability or drug addiction, or born to a teen mom have just as much worth as “the child conceived in privilege, wealth, and health.”

Just imagine if yesterday’s verdict had gone the other way? Would there be rioting in the streets? Would Patagonia be paying to bail out employees who engaged in unlawful protest? Would abortion clinics and the DNC be under physical attack? In a word, no. There would have been profound sorrow, but not violence and rage. For the last 50 years, those opposed to abortion have had to live under a tyrannical decree that is anathema to everything we hold dear. We’ve even had to subsidize the nation’s largest abortion business, who receives a half-billion in tax-payer dollars every year. And yet with rare exceptions, our efforts to change abortion policy have been peaceful and lawful. But just one night into post-Roe America, those who support abortion are already threatening to burn our institutions to the ground—literally and figuratively—not because the Court outlawed abortion (it didn’t) but because it finally admitted that the Constitution does not protect abortion.

I saw very little sorrow amidst all the “pro-choice’ vitriol streaming across my social feeds yesterday. That’s indicative of the equal but opposite principles which animate the two sides of the abortion debate. Those who oppose abortion believe others are more important than themselves. Those who support abortion do not, and I’m not even sure they’d deny it. Prioritizing self has become a cardinal virtue. Sacrificing for the sake of others, an almost unpardonable sin. This is the same divide that separates the Christian worldview from the secular. It is the difference between the first shall be last and the first shall be first. Matt Walsh said it like this:

One side is happy that babies will live. The other is sad that babies will live. And that is all you need to know about the ideological divide in America.

Critics may call that an unfair caricature, but the more you think about it, the harder it is to refute. That’s what the essence of their complaint is. Fewer babies will die in the womb without Roe; more babies will survive to birth and beyond. It’s almost as if abortion advocates have made a deal with the devil. So long as they’re allowed to sacrifice their unwanted unborn children, they’ll play nice. But threaten that “right” in any way, and the hounds of hell will be released. God help us.

I am ecstatic about the fall of Roe, but I’m deeply concerned about the future of our nation. How can you not be? No one alive today has ever lived in a more divided America. Before the Civil War, there were slave states and free states. Now there will be abortion states and abortion-free states. That’s vastly preferable to the Roe model—where every state was an abortion state, but I do wonder where and how this all ends. Abortion is violence. And those who support it most vehemently demonstrate little restraint. They hate guns (and by all appearances, America), but they have no qualms with violence—as we’re already seeing. 

Society can only survive when basic moral principles are shared—the foremost of which is: thou shalt not kill. For 50 years, we’ve talked right past each other on the abortion issue, but I’m no longer sure that can even be avoided. Our shared values seem to be diminishing by the day. Actually, that’s not quite true. We’re agreed on the values. It’s wrong to murder children, but we’re not agreed on the facts. Yes, abortion kills a human being. That’s a fact. Yes, it’s a human being that has yet to reach puberty. Also a fact. Doesn’t that mean, then, that abortion kills a human child?  Not according to abortion advocates—who here appeal to metaphysical concepts like consciousness, sentience, pain awareness, and personal autonomy. On this particular issue, those on the right are rigid materialists. Those on the left are dyed-in-the-wool spiritualists. They sort of have to be. They started with a conclusion, abortion is justified, and they’ve worked backwards to make the data fit. Needless to say, that’s not how the scientific method is supposed to work.

On a more hopeful note, we’re about to see what large swaths of the country look like sans abortion. Abortion advocates are predicting disaster. I’m predicting the opposite. As red states become redder and blue states bluer, I think it will become even more apparent which policies lead to thriving and which lead to devastation. We’re already seeing it in play. The four states who lost the greatest share of residents in 2021 were New York, Illinois, Hawaii, and California. All four states are as blue as they come, and three of the four are bona fide abortion meccas. It’s possible that disaffected abortion devotees from red states will now relocate to these once thriving locales, but it’s also possible they’ll realize that public policy matters, like really matters. And maybe they’ll discover that access to legal abortion isn’t as important as they once believed, especially when accompanied by surging crime, an untenable cost of living, and schools that no longer function. How many people care enough about abortion to actually relocate to a different state? We’re about to find out.

As for Abort73, our name is directly tied to the Roe decision. Did you know that? The 73 references the year Roe was decided. The “abort” reflects our desire to see that ruling terminated. And now it has been! So what does that mean for us moving forward? That remains to be seen. I don’t anticipate a name change, but who knows, maybe Meta73 is available. I jest, of course. The Abort73 name has always been intentionally opaque, more curio than statement. And either way, our focus on education will remain the same. The goal for me has never been the mere eradication of Roe. It was always the eradication of abortion itself. And though abortion can never be eliminated altogether, we can at least strip from it the protection of law. We can relegate it to the realm of child abuse and assault. Until then, I offer my sincerest thanks to the five justices who literally risked their lives to right the wrongs of Roe—and to the lawmakers in Mississippi and beyond who have worked so hard to strike abortion from the books. I’ve no doubt that generations unborn will rise up to praise you.