Three Years Since Overturning of Roe v. Wade, Much Work is Still Required

This year, on June 24, 2025, the three-year anniversary of the overturning of Roe v. Wade coincided with the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (New Calendar). 

Christians know the story, but secular society does not grasp its importance. Sts. Zacharias and Elizabeth were advanced in years and remained childless, but six months before the Annunciation to the Mother of God, the Archangel Gabriel visited Zacharias who was a priest serving at the altar of incense, telling him of the coming birth of his son, who was to be named John.

Later, when Gabriel tells the Virgin Mary that she will conceive and bring forth a son named Jesus, he also says, “Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible” (Luke 1:36-37).

The Theotokos, with absolute faith, responds to this announcement with the beautiful words, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.” And with that, we have the Christian model of obedience for our entire lives.

When Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, and when Elizabeth hears Mary’s greeting, “the babe leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.”

“Then she spoke out with a loud voice and said, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! But why is it granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For indeed, as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.’”

- Luke 1:42-44

In his 1998 book titled, “The Sacred Gift of Life,” Fr. John Breck writes that the Fall “forces us into a permanent position of choice.”

“Our free decision to rebel against God’s will has exiled us from Paradise. The human creature, according to St. Basil, ‘is an animal who received the command to become God.’ By succumbing to temptation, however, we have alienated ourselves from God and betrayed our ultimate vocation. In Christ we have the possibility of progressing ‘from glory to glory’ (2 Cor 3:18) toward that full and perfect communion with divine Life that provides the indispensable foundation for authentic humanity or personhood.”

We see, then, that choice isn’t so much an absolute moral good as it is a result of the Fall. We can make choices that lead us towards life in Christ or death in sin. One would not expect to hear an argument that murder is acceptable so long as one has the choice to do it, and yet this is the rationale that the pro-choice framework is based on.

This is due, not to the fact that abortionists don’t see a fetus as a human life, but rather that they don’t see a fetus as a human person. This belief is essentially what Roe v. Wade was based on – that a person as described in the 14th Amendment does not include the unborn. This still impacts laws around the world today, as there are states and countries that do not allow abortion after 24 weeks of gestation, which is considered the age of “fetal viability,” or when a fetus has a better chance of survival outside of the womb according to medical capabilities. However, there have been instances of survival even earlier than that, such as Richard Hutchinson, who was born at 21 weeks in Minnesota in 2020, and Curtis Zy-Keith Means, also born at 21 weeks in Alabama in 2020.

St. John the Baptist would have been roughly at or past 24 weeks of age when he leapt in the womb. He did this in recognition of the Messiah, who, for pro-choicers, wasn’t even developed into any meaningful form of personhood. 

It is unquestionable – both from a scientific and a moral standpoint – that life begins at conception. That life is developing, and eventually, based on an ever-changing standard, will achieve personhood. For secularists, this idea of personhood is generally attached to when and if a fetus can survive outside of the womb and stop acting as a “parasite” to the mother, which, due to developments in technology, is occurring earlier and earlier all the time. Therefore, this is not a transcendent moral argument but rather one that is only based on current technological capabilities. 

Despite a survey in which 96% of biologists from 1,058 academic institutions around the world said that human life begins at fertilization, Americans remain split on whether this view is a “philosophical or religious belief” (45%) or a “biological and scientific fact” (46%), and only 38% of Americans view fertilization as the starting point of a human’s life (“The Scientific Consensus on When a Human's Life Begins,” Steven Andrew Jacobs, 2021).

This disconnect is due to the high placement of choice in American culture. So long as one chooses to do something, and it isn’t perceived to be “harming others” (yet another arbitrary statement), that action is OK. In the case of abortion, the justification of the taking of a life is rendered acceptable due to the fetus’ supposed lack of personhood, which our modern culture conflates with life.

This is the same argument that can, will, and has been used for the practice of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, and the total practice of eugenics through abortion. In Iceland, nearly 100% of women who receive a positive result for Down syndrome during prenatal screenings choose to terminate the pregnancy. In the U.S., this figure is at 67%. 

Frank Stephens, an actor and athlete with Down syndrome, said this while testifying before Congress in 2017:

“Some people say prenatal screens will identify Down syndrome in the womb and those pregnancies will just be terminated. It’s hard for me to sit here and say those words. I completely understand that the people pushing this particular ‘final solution’ are saying that people like me should not exist. That final view is deeply prejudiced by an outdated idea of life with Down syndrome. Seriously, I have a great life!”

The presupposition that a predicted quality of life can be the basis for the taking of one can be found nowhere in early Christian meditation on the issue.

In the fourth century, St. Gregory of Nyssa said that the beginning of existence is one and the same for the body and soul. In that same century, St. Basil the Great is explicit in saying that Christians do not have a “precise distinction between a fetus which has been formed and one which has not been formed,” adding that “any hair splitting distinction as to its being formed is inadmissible with us.” Notably, he says that any woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder.

St. John Chrysostom, in one of his homilies on Romans, gives equal chastisement to the father, saying:

“Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit? Where there are many efforts at abortion? Where there is murder before the birth? For even the harlot you do not let continue a mere harlot but make her a murderess also. You see how drunkenness leads to whoredom, whoredom to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not eliminate the thing born, but prevents its being born.”

Chrysostom adds that the man “arms for slaughter” the woman, and even if the deed is hers, the causing of it is his.

These are not original beliefs by some of the foremost Church Fathers, but rather reflect the consistent teaching of the Orthodox Tradition.

The Didache, or “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles to the Nations,” is an early Christian treatise dated to the first or second century. After the first chapter, which speaks about the “two ways” (life or death) and the first and second commandments on the path to life (love God Who made you and love your neighbor as yourself), the second chapter gives brief condemnations of grave sins. 

In this chapter, there is the explicit command, “You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.” The fact that the chapter begins with “You shall not murder,” yet it is still found necessary to later single out the act of abortion as murder, shows how this specific form of murder has been a consistent cause of deception.

Then there are the below Old Testament verses, written by King David and the Prophet Jeremiah:

“For You formed my inward parts;

You covered me in my mother’s womb.

I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

Marvelous are Your works,

And that my soul knows very well.

My frame was not hidden from You,

When I was made in secret,

And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.

And in Your book they all were written,

The days fashioned for me,

When as yet there were none of them.”

- Psalm 138:13-16

 

“Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying:

‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;

Before you were born I sanctified you;

I ordained you a prophet to the nations.’”

- Jeremiah 1:4-5

According to the most recent data that predates the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there were 625,978 abortions in the U.S. in 2021. Of those abortions, the majority of women who had them were in their 20s (57%), with 31% being in their 30s and teens aged 13-19 accounting for 8%. Women aged 40-44 accounted for about 4%.

Further data from the Pew Research Center shows that 42% of women who had abortions were black, 30% were white, 22% were Hispanic and 6% were of other races. As Margaret Sanger’s vision was to plant clinics in lower income neighborhoods, giving them the “freedom” to abort their children and obtain birth control in the same way as the wealthy population, and to disguise the “right to choose” as a means of eugenics against the African-American population, her mission seems to have largely succeeded, as black women make up less than 14% of the total population of women.

“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want to the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

- Margaret Sanger in a 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble

“Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need… We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock.”

- Margaret Sanger, April 1933 in the Birth Control Review

As religion was once the defender of unborn life, secularists have sought to infiltrate and use it as a means to preach abortion to the masses. A 2017 survey published by the Pew Research Center actually reveals that 90% of Unitarian Universalists believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as opposed to 87% of atheists and agnostics. Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Evangelical Lutherans, and Methodists also range from the high 50% to high 70% range. Sadly, even Orthodox Christians polled in the majority on this topic at 53%, despite the Church teaching strictly against it.

Historically, this opinion among the Christian population would be unthinkable. The secular movement to separate life from personhood and the promotion of the “I wouldn’t do that, but it’s OK if other people do” ideology has done tremendous harm. A typical argument used by liberal Christians is that Christ didn’t say anything about abortion in the New Testament, which again reveals the presupposition that the command not to kill doesn’t apply to abortion, and borders on Marcianism in acting like Jesus isn’t the same God as the Old Testament God. 

Notably, a study from the Guttmacher Institute found that roughly 1% of abortions are sought due to rape, less than 0.5% are sought due to incest, and that 74% of abortions are because “having a baby would dramatically change my life.”

Currently, about 2% of all abortions in the U.S. are performed due to some type of medical complication for the woman, so the argument that abortion must remain legal due to “what-ifs” is largely based on a presupposition and not actual data. Based on this logic, it would also make sense for the pro-life crowd to point out the number of women who have died due to complications from abortion. 

What is quite sad, though, is that 98% of women who get an abortion do it simply because they chose to. And despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the ability to “choose,” although no longer enshrined by the federal government, remains what is deemed most important.

In a social media statement posted in April 2024, President Donald Trump said that abortion is now “where everyone wanted it from a legal standpoint” and that the states will decide what the law will be.

“Many states will be different,” he said. “Many will have a different number of weeks, or some will have more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be. At the end of the day, this is about the will of the people.”

The will of the people still does not align with the will of God. In the 2024 election, four states voted to expand abortion access while also voting for Trump, and seven states established the right to abortion while voting for Trump. This cognitive dissonance does not only exist on the left, but also on the right. 

While abortion is no longer protected by the federal government, the fact remains – the U.S. does not promote or nurture a culture of life as long as abortions are permitted, even when individual states decide. In states where abortion is illegal, many women are not following the law out of love for God and His creation, but rather out of obedience to the state. Some even travel to other states in order to get an abortion. 

Human life is valuable in all places and at all times, simply due to the fact that we are created in the image and likeness of God. 

Just as St. John the Baptist was miraculously conceived, leaped for joy at the recognition of Jesus Christ, and eventually paved the way for our Lord and His ministry, we as Christians must also understand the miracle and gift of life, recognize Christ in each and every person, and say together with the Forerunner, out of love and genuine concern for the salvation of our brothers and sisters, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”

“About abortion, I don’t want to make it illegal. I want to make it unthinkable. Politicians change laws. I want to change people’s hearts.”

- Frank Stephens

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