Written by Ed Straka

In his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, author Neil Postman describes the growth and outright dominance of the entertainment industry and the all-pervading influence it has had upon American culture. More to the point – the book illustrated how a culture could literally be dumbed down by the type of entertainment it dealt with and consisted of. Equally telling in the author’s mind was how much time was spent viewing and reading material that was as frivolously meaningless as it was sensual and vulgar.

Yet, and co-relative to the above was the unfortunate reality that people no longer spent time reading, thinking about, or discussing things of import (Phil. 4:8). Rather, they chose to contemplate the words of some popular gadfly, movie star or rap musician, or lose themselves in endless hours of television. In other words, Proverbs tells us that the fool’s eyes are in the ends of the earth (Proverbs 17:24), but in our case – it’s the TV, video games and the tabloids. Postman suggested that our media was used like the drug “Soma” in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to medicate the masses into complacency.

Now and Then

As much as I agree with Postman’s assessment of our culture and the mindless rabble it appears to be producing exponentially, I would also like to suggest there is an even greater and more pernicious threat out there today that not only invites people into an alternative world – but a world of randomness and outright oblivion. A world so absorbing, not to mention stimulating, that young people prefer it to reality – and in time – seem to detach themselves from reality.

Consider: When we were growing up, the big thing was movies. There were no video games, only Checkers, Monopoly and pinball games at the bowling alley and the big concern of our parents was sexuality. Hollywood then – as it continues to now – constantly pushed the envelope with both language and the dress code. The racier movies were a cause of concern for our parents who, more often than not, banished us into the other room where we lamented our excommunication from the world of adults which meant access to movies with bad language and loose dress codes.

This was only natural: our desire was for the things that adults were aware of and participated in, accentuated by the fact that our parents kept it from us. Even to this day sexuality is cause for concern not only in the sense of living in a carnal society that seeks to seduce everyone and everything, but also in the real world of teen pregnancy and the unfortunate abortion of those unwanted babies (despite the recent overturning of Roe vs. Wade).

What movies especially did for the young, however, was to teach us about the world and the things in it. Above all, it taught us to dream about being a hero and heroes generally did the right thing. Even Jimmy Cagney when playing a gangster on his way to the electric chair could be counted on to say that his life was a waste and he had made a mistake if it meant scaring some kids straight. The biggest downside to TV back then was we probably watched too much of it.

Stories had a definite beginning with a goal, a problem, a solution to the problem and the struggle to apply the solution. All stories had an ending which was clear to the eye of the beholder. When it was all said and done, we kids knew they were only movies although we wanted to be like the people we saw in those movies.

Ideas Within

Today, however, things are different. In fact, there is an even greater problem in society that is wrapped up in the very fiber of our youth culture today that goes beyond bad language and loose dress codes. This “problem” stems from the pens and typewriters of men who rule the world from the grave, philosophically speaking: Marx, Nietzsche, Darwin, Freud, B.F. Skinner, and Jean Paul Sarte.

Each of these men had a profound, atheistic philosophy of life that influenced various academic disciplines and their perspective on the field of anthropology and what it means to be human. We don’t see it as clearly for two reasons:

First off, it is embedded in many of the movies, music, video games and comic books that our young people are involved with and if we do catch a glimpse, we just label it as “violent.”

Secondly, most people don’t study philosophy, so they don’t know the major players and the terms and phrases used by these men nor the implications of these terms and phrases when applied.

I can assure you, however, our modern media is much more than just “violent” but decidedly dangerous in terms of the human psyche because it stems from the internal dynamic latent within us all: sin. Modern technology amplifies sin and the desire for it with all the bells and whistles and unbelievable graphics. Equally, there is something latent within the various forms of media in terms of the ethos portrayed philosophically.

What’s not realized by most people is that many philosophers over the centuries perpetuated various non-Christian beliefs through their writings and these ideas ended up in educational institutions and the students of these educational institutions eventually graduated and joined mainstream America as educators, musicians, script writers and novelists.

Playtime?…

In time would come the world of high-tech video game developers who themselves pirated many of these ideas they encountered in a class, or in a movie or book, and used them to build what is called in movies a “story line” or “plot” and in the gaming world a “scenario.”

Some movies are obscene in the true sense of the word’s definition: it belongs “off stage” meaning it’s not necessary to advance the plot of the movie or play. Hollywood is replete with these movies and with the rise of Netflix we now have access to movies from abroad that have no moral sensibilities at all in terms of what they allow on screen.

Video games are not much better. Although I’ve never seen the games, nor did my boys buy them, there are games one can play featuring scenarios that can be anything from shooting up a school or public building to rape and out-right destruction of a city. I believe the most infamous such game is called “Grand Theft Auto.”

What needs to be understood is this: these are not just games and movies! They are philosophical & psychological conditioners that proselytize a specific world and life view that is antithetical to Christianity. Equally, it is a world designed to draw us in because it panders to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life (1 John 2:16): the very things the script writers and game designers have given themselves over to (Jude 1:8).

The themes of most of these novels or movie story lines or video game “scenarios” are built on the witch’s brew of atheism and historical relativism and the reality of what men and women are capable of who were influenced by the ideas of the above-mentioned men if not restrained by a transcendent moral code.

In other words, if the above-mentioned men, and those like them are correct, and there is no fixed reference point in the universe residing metaphysically in an actual God – then there can be no ultimate standard of right and wrong to base morality upon. A prospect which leaves the human race “home alone” as it were, driven by the blind forces of nature which itself is driven by unknowable forces of biological necessity and determinism and nothing else. Man is all impulse and exercises his will with no remorse (1 Corinthians 2:14).

It is this world of relativism mixed in with the idea of man as animal trained by unknown outside forces with no beginning, no purpose, and thus no real goal in life that acts as the backdrop for these games and the various novels and movies available to young people today. All of which is designed to show that there is no ultimate meaning to life: only a colorful, high-tech invitation into the Void.

Granted, my generation caught glimpses of endless, violent life with little purpose in Clint Eastwood westerns and Charles Bronson fighter movies, yet these characters still portrayed a sense of crude justice and generally defended the weak and put down bad guys. Things are different now.

The dominating thing in all the movies, music, comic books, and games today is the quest for three things: ecstasy, escape or power. Each of those concepts has its appeal to different individuals for all human beings have a sinful tendency. But for those to whom God is a non-existent entity these three things are the focus of life, as opposed to what Scripture admonishes us to focus upon (Philippians 4:8).

When It’s All Said and Done

Understand: I’m not suggesting if you or your child plays a video game you will both become a nutcase. I am suggesting that those whose total free time is spent in the world of unreality end up with difficulty when faced with reality and will utilize those tools they have been “evangelized” with via entertainment (1 John 4:3). The new Avatar movie is case and point: history sold with fantastic colors, special effects and graphics that in the end suggests that Western Civilization is cruel, greedy and selfish and if we could only return to the pristine past of the noble savage – in this case blue with tails – all would be well. Ironically, the very system that Cameron castigates is the social-economics system responsible for his great wealth and fame as a director, but what’s $700,000,000 have to do with it?

Thus, as parents who seek to raise their children as well as educate them intentionally for hopes of a brighter, productive future serving in the Kingdom of God, it is important to realize that “education” does not stop with the homeschooling lesson of the day but continues with your child’s entertainment (1 Corinthians 15:33; ESV).

Choose wisely!

Edward Straka has spent most of his adult life in education having taught at the collegiate level  as well as the high school level in the areas of Ancient and Medieval History, U.S. History, World View, Economics and US Government. He has pastored churches in Wisconsin and Mississippi and taught Japanese at Honda of America, and Piqua Community College in Ohio. He has written both historical fiction and futuristic dystopian fiction with a bio-ethical slant as well as nonfiction social theory books available on Amazon. Currently, Mr. Straka teaches Theology and is the acting Director of Christian Liberty Homeschools headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois, yet having students throughout the world.

This article was originally published by our friends at Christian Liberty Homeschools.

I have always loved children. I was not much beyond childhood myself when I decided there was nothing more endearing than a baby. Their innocence and utter vulnerability make it impossible for anyone with a heart not to be drawn to them, to love them, and want to protect them. I am confident in declaring that there is not a greater human evil than that of destroying the life of a child! Jesus Christ agreed when He said that it would be better that a person have a millstone hung around their neck and they be cast into the sea than to cause offense (injury) to a child!

That there is today a significant and powerful coalition of Americans demanding the right to take the life of unborn (and some post-born) children, is nauseatingly offensive to any compassionate person!  It defies logic and must be understood for what it is.  It is not about “choice.”  It is about hating God and His authority, thus hating what He loves, and loving what He hates.

Abortion advocates attempt to make the discussion about “freedom of choice,” or “equality” for women.  But these are distractions and lies.  Reasonable people favor freedom and equality for all, but if these issues were really the heart of the debate, the Left would use other messaging.  A genuine discussion about freedom of choice would certainly include without prejudice or scorn the choice to have children, even many children, and adoption.  But those who call themselves pro-choice disallow all choices but that of killing the baby.  And a real discussion regarding equality would have to include a study of what true equality looks like.  To treat everyone, male and female, young and old, identically is not equality! For some it would be torture!

So, as the Nation wrestles over abortion in the aftermath of Roe vs Wade being overturned, what is really being debated?  Is it about whether its right to demand that a woman, who is inadvertently pregnant, must carry that baby to term, or whether a woman, in order to be “equal” with a man, must be able to abort her child at any time for any reason?  Or is there something much deeper than these things?

The frightening reality is that the conflict is much larger than these issues. We are arguing over whether we are a nation that loves righteousness and goodness, or lawlessness and evil, God or no God. According to the Bible it is the fool, not the scientist who “says in his heart, ‘there is no God!’” No genuine scientist would make such a claim, for at best, he cannot prove it either way, and at worst he would be arguing against a fundamental of science, which requires a cause for every effect. God is the cause of and the “connector” that created and holds the universe together. There is no other reasonable explanation for our universe.

Thus, the issue is not really over abortion and equality, but whether God and order rule, or godlessness and chaos. This dichotomy becomes more evident when you compare the statements and positions of both sides: Right and Left are not precise labels, but for lack of simpler, more precise, designations, we will use them.

1. Those on the Right support life from conception to natural death. We wholeheartedly agree with God that children are a blessing from God, (Ps. 127:3-5) and are in no way a burden to be avoided.  The Left sees children as a burden or even a curse to be rejected and advocates for death for the unborn, unwanted post-born, sick or depressed (euthanasia).  Consider the multitude of excuses Leftists create to reject childbearing: overpopulation, the environment, “choice,” or “they are an overwhelming burden.” Underlying the Left’s willingness to abort babies is the atheistic philosophy that we are mere animals and thus have no inherent value or right to life.  Not surprising as God states in Proverbs 8:36 that, “All those who hate Me love death.”

2. The Right Advocates for what is best for children: life itself, intact traditional families, high quality education emphasizing righteousness and appropriate life skills, such as the 3-Rs, character and integrity.  The Left advocates for adults’ pleasures trumping children’s health and well-being.  It is impossible to justify libraries hosting “drag queen story hours” for children other than to groom those children to be used by adults. Giving little children explicit sexual information only serves perverted adults.

3. The Right demands truth while the Left has claimed for decades that there is no such thing as truth. The Left exposes the fact that they know truth exists each time they accuse conservatives of lying and demand we believe their words. A lie, by definition, is a contradiction to truth, thus lies can only exist if there is truth to misrepresent!

4. The Right advocates for keeping sexuality attached to traditional marriage and childbearing, as sex promoted for its own sake cheapens it and, like a drug, it becomes destructive. The Left, by promoting sex as an end in itself, has created a scenario where children are considered a burden and a nuisance. Not surprising that millions of children today suffer from numerous mental health disorders, including a sense of having little or no value! Duh! Didn’t see that coming!

5. The Right calls for a willing self-sacrifice of one’s own desires and pleasure for the good of others, especially children and those who are unable to advocate and provide for themselves. The Left demands that their choices and pleasure preempt others’, especially children. (Ironically it is the Leftists, in promoting socialism, who assume, contrary to their own demands, that self-sacrifice is normal to humanity, yet hypocritically refuse to practice it when it comes to their own sexuality!)

6. The Right desires humane treatment for animals but understands that animals do not have rights as people do. Animal rights advocates are generally on the Left, with many demanding an end to the human use of animals altogether. Yet, it is the Left that has no compunction about killing babies and even celebrates the right to do so!

7. The Right understands that trials and difficulties are allowed by God to mature us, to build greater character, and drive us closer to Him, with rest from such troubles coming in eternity . The Left sees troubles as something to be avoided in their quest for the “good life” here and now.  Children are thus seen as obstacles to happiness, not part of it.

8. The Right uses truth and argument to promote its principles. (The few among us who have chosen the Left’s violent methods have been strongly rebuked by leaders of the Right).  However, the Left has no qualms with using violence and the perversion of governmental authority to harass and intimidate those with whom they disagree.  Jesus told His disciples to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves,” (Matthew 10:16).

This year as we mourn the loss of over sixty million unborn children in the fifty years since Roe-V-Wade was decided, let us remember that the battle for life is merely one skirmish on a multi-front war. The real war is between the forces of righteousness and the forces of evil. The righteousness we represent is not our own.  We choose to stand with God and the Bible to proclaim His word, His righteousness, and His goodness. The pro-life movement has won a small battle, for the moment, by mere political will; but it is a tenuous and short-lived victory if there is no national revival. America’s sex and death cultists, which is the Left, have not laid down their arms. They stand with the “kings of the earth” who have set themselves “against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, ’Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away Their cords from us.’”  They do not know that this war has raged for thousands of years but the outcome has already been determined. It is only a matter of time before “the Lord shall hold them in derision.  He shall speak to them in His wrath, and distress them in His deep displeasure.” One day He will “break them with a rod of iron (and) dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.” (Excerpts from Psalm 2).

As long as Americans continue to elect leaders who are at war with God and truth, this battle to save the unborn and other vulnerable people from the malice of the Left will not end. As long as our political, cultural and educational classes, as well as multitudes of so-called “Christian” leaders, elevate the sexual pleasures of adults over the lives of children, this battle will rage on. So long as the Left views us all as mere animals, not image bearers of God, the battle will continue. If or when, however, Americans repent and submit to the righteousness of God it may possibly then be safe to be a child in America again!

That must be our desire and prayer!  God is a gracious God!

SPEAKOUT

It is an unfortunate fact that very few Americans today are familiar with the principles of common law. If they are familiar with it at all, many assume it to be something akin to the fact that if you live together unmarried for 7 years, you are considered to be legally married. In other words, the idea of law that is unwritten yet practiced.  In truth, there is much more to it than that.  Central to common law is the idea that law can be discovered but not made. This is grounded in the principle of “higher law – the concept that there is a law higher than any government’s law.

Richard Maybury is widely regarded as one of the top free-market writers in America and is the author of the “Uncle Eric” series of books which introduces young people to the principles on which our country’s legal and economic system was founded. His book Whatever Happened to Justice has some profound things to say about common law and its connection to the abortion issue.  Quoted in Mayberry’s book is Terry Eastland who reiterates the concept: “Up until the 1930’s the idea was understood that a judge is merely an interpreter of established law.” Law is found by judges, not made.

And the criteria for “finding” this law are the two common law principles of “do all you have agreed to do” and “do not encroach on other persons or their property.” Common law principles were at the heart of what corrected the atrocity of slavery where human beings were being regarded as property. Through the process of “discovering, not making” law, the truth was found “all are created equal,” “all are persons,” and “all should have equal protection under the law.”

Likewise, at the heart of the abortion debate is the definition of the word “person.” What is a person? Is it connected to– intelligence? A beating heart? Two cells that have fused and begun to be “formed in a woman’s inward parts?” These questions deserve discussion and answers within the context of higher law. And while higher law has a connection with religion and truth, those answers aren’t religious issues; they are human issues. I can be an atheist and understand the truth of personhood–the reality that  “humans are not property,” that “persons” have a right to life.

The beauty of common law is it allows for the debate for finding truth, for finding higher law and ensuring it forms the basis of actual law. But now we are in danger of political law, or made-up law, taking over when so much is at stake. For central to the abortion debate, and erroneously so, is the idea that mere men and women can make up law.

It explains why legislators such as U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren are ranting and raving and losing their minds screaming “the majority of Americans don’t want Roe Vs. Wade overturned,” revealing their view that the decision should be made by what most people want rather than by what is right. The essential question is not, “Do the majority of Americans want Roe Vs. Wade to stand; the essential question is   “What says Higher Law?”

This is where the Nuremberg Trials come in. While the German people originally recognized the killing of any innocent life as murder, political law–made-up law–crept in. Political leaders, with the cooperation of judges, slowly changed the law. Legalizing the killing of the mentally incompetent and making their way to the killing of millions of Jews and those trying to rescue them.

They were killed by those following “the law.” Were the perpetrators right? Were they excused? Was “political law” vindicated? The Nuremberg Trials  answered with a resounding “NO!” Nazi defendants arguing they were “just following the law” were held accountable not to political law, but to higher law. Judges in the trial declared, “The fact that the defendant acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility.”

The impact of that decision was three-fold: 1) there is a higher law than any government’s law; 2) we are all obliged to obey it; 3) and courts must seek out and enforce higher law. The “seeking out’ is what common law is all about. Rather than make up laws, law must be discovered through religious and philosophical principles.

In the current political realm, we are at a crossroads. Will the right to life for the unborn  be settled through a constitutional amendment? Will it be decided by majority rule?

The potential for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe Vs. Wade and send it back to the states where it belongs is a hopeful first step. But, it mustn’t end there. Once back in the states, the issue must be searched out, questioned, and explored. The definition of personhood must be determined. The principles of higher law must be applied. It MUST not be left in the hands of “majority rule.”

In the words of Richard Maybury, if majority rule decides the abortion issue:

“The right to life, yours, mine, and everybody else’s will be regarded not as a given, not as a gift from the Creator, but as a gift from the voters. And the voters can change their minds. The victory of political law will be complete. Nuremberg will be gone, and no one’s life will be safe. Our legal system will be sitting squarely on the same foundation as Nazi Germany.”

It wasn’t so long ago that such a thing would be unthinkable: a standing ovation for abortion in the New York State Senate chamber with the passage of legislation permitting abortion for any reason up until the moment of birth. Already in New York City, one in three babies are aborted. The bill goes so far as to drop the requirement that doctors perform abortions and decriminalizes acts of violence that result in the deaths of unborn babies. In other words, if an unborn baby dies in the commission of an act of violence against his or her mother, the perpetrator will no longer be held criminally liable for the baby’s death.

So much for “safe, legal and rare.” With this patently facetious mantra, it took Democratic president Bill Clinton only two days into his presidency to reverse policies restricting abortion instituted by his Republican predecessors Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.

Virtually all Democratic candidates in recent memory, from candidates for president on down, have campaigned on their commitment to preserving the legal right to kill the unborn. It wasn’t always this way. In 1937, in response to doctors performing abortions during the Great Depression, the National Federation of Catholic Physician’s Guild issued a statement condemning abortion. In those days the opponents of abortion were more likely to be Democratic than Republican. President Roosevelt’s New Deal drew considerable support from the Catholic Church’s desire to protect and nurture all life–including the unborn.

Some of the first vocal proponents of abortion were, surprisingly, Republicans. Moderate Republican governor Nelson Rockefeller shepherded through his state’s abortion reform law in 1970. In 1967 in California, that icon of conservatives, a then “moderate” Ronald Reagan, signed a similar bill loosening restrictions on abortion. But the issue was gaining steam, and by the 1970’s conservative Republicans, campaigning on opposition to abortion after the disastrous Roe vs. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1973, were able to wrest control of the GOP.

The battle lines were drawn in 1976 when the first presidential election since Roe vs. Wade brought the issue to the forefront. Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter, despite his Evangelical Christian bona fides, walked a tightrope trying to appeal to both sides. From then until the present, Democratic politicians have declared, despite massive evidence to the contrary, that they only wish to have abortion “safe, legal, and rare.” In 1976, the outrage against such duplicitous arguments produced a successful effort to end Medicaid funding for abortion with the Hyde Amendment, the first significant legislative victory for anti-abortion activists after Roe vs. Wade.

While abortion activists argue for unrestricted access to abortion throughout pregnancy, polls show that support for late-term abortions continues to decline, with a paltry 13 percent of Americans supporting abortion during the third trimester. The enthusiastic crowds at the annual March for Life are further evidence of the widespread desire to protect innocent human life in the womb. The most recent March for Life saw an unprecedented show of political firepower, with addresses by the president, vice-president and House speaker, all heralding the gains that the movement has made under the presidency of Donald Trump, who stated: “Under my administration, we will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence, and that is the right to life.”

The new Democratic mantra: “While personally opposed to abortion, the U.S. Supreme Court is the law of the land, and thus I must respect Roe vs. Wade” is beginning to wear thin. As we lament the 45^th anniversary of that calamitous legal decision, the effect of this assertion wanes and the abortion issue is becoming an even more highly charged issue.

Democratic leaders have used the 45th anniversary of Roe v. Wade to reiterate their support for legal abortion and launch new onerous legislation in Illinois and other states–hoping to expand so-called “reproductive rights” and access at the expense of innocent human lives. Now is the time for people of faith–Democrats and Republicans alike–to raise their voices in defense of the most vulnerable among us: the unborn.

As President Trump gazed out over his audience in the U.S. House of Representatives chamber during his State of the Union address, he had to have noticed the prominent block of female Democratic lawmakers seated front and center, dressed in white to symbolize their growing power in the halls of government.  Their presence was a painful reminder to the President that in the 2018 Congressional races female voters preferred Democratic candidates by 19 points, sending a record 106 women to Congress.

As he begins the third year of his presidency, Trump is in the doghouse with the fairer sex who, according to the polls, disapprove of him by almost a 2-to-1 margin. Quite a turnaround from 2016, when Trump won the election with record support of women – notably white women.

Accordingly, the President spent much of his speech touting women’s gains during his administration, which sent the Democratic contingent to their feet in enthusiastic applause.  In addition to job creation and electoral successes for women, Trump noted that paid family leave –a key women’s issue – was included in his budget.  One senses the standing ovations when certain issues were raised were not in praise of Trump, but rather defiant, as in: “Your days are numbered.”

Undeterred by his ambivalent audience, Trump launched into his signature issue of immigration, pointing out that many female illegal immigrants are sexually assaulted on their long journey to the US southern border.  He even highlighted the presence in the chamber of an ICE agent who rescues women from sex traffickers.  The contingent dressed in white sat stone-faced and muted in lock-step with their leadership, which has announced its opposition to a border wall despite the dangers posed to female illegal immigrants

Turning his attention to a central issue for social conservatives, the President boldly announced his opposition to what he termed “chilling” legislation recently introduced in New York and Virginia that would loosen abortion restrictions: “Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth. These are living, feeling, beautiful babies who will never get the chance to share their love and dreams with the world … Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life,” he pleaded to vigorous applause from Republicans.

The abortion issue is gaining steam nationwide in the buildup to the 2020 national elections.  Worldometers.info, a site that tracks global statistics in real time, reports that abortions are the leading cause of death worldwide.  The 43 million abortions in 2018 exceeded deaths from all other causes, including cancer and heart ailments.  With a President who unabashedly addressed the issue in his SOTU speech, we can hope and pray that his words will encourage a great movement to overturn Roe vs. Wade and finally put an end to abortion, led by masses of those who concur with his words: “Let us reaffirm a fundamental truth: all children — born and unborn — are made in the holy image of God.”

Christian Life in Exile
On February 22^nd, IFI is hosting a special forum with Dr. Erwin Lutzer as he teaches from his latest book, “The Church in Babylon,” answering the question, “How do we live faithfully in a culture that perceives our light as darkness?” This event is free and open to the public, and will be held at Jubilee Church in Medinah, Illinois.

Click HERE for more info…

Written by  Daniel K. Williams

Pro-lifers need to better understand the history of the pro-life movement and what Roe did to it.

On the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, it has suddenly become fashionable in certain circles to suggest that the controversial Supreme Court decision was actually a blessing in disguise for pro-lifers, because it breathed new life into a fledgling right-to-life movement and put the abortion rights movement permanently on the defensive. Pro-choice activists have been “losing ever since” Roe, a Time magazine cover story proclaimed this month. Jon Shields pushed this argument even further in the January issue of First Things, declaring that Roe “crippled the pro-choice and energized the pro-life movement, creating one of the largest campaigns of moral suasion in American history.”

Unfortunately, most pro-lifers are unprepared to respond to claims like these, because for years pro-lifers have not really understood what Roe did. They have too often accepted the myth that neither legal abortion nor an organized pro-life movement existed prior to Roe. Although they have denounced Roe vociferously, they have justified doing so with the erroneous argument that Roe was the primary cause of the nation’s high rate of legal abortion, as though legal abortion did not exist in the United States before 1973.

Actually, Roe did not introduce legal abortion to the United States; it did something even worse. Prior to Roe, legal abortion existed, but so did a large, vigorous pro-life movement, and that movement was beginning to win the public debate on abortion. Roe deprived the pro-life movement of its legal victories and allowed abortion to become more available to poor and minority women. It subverted the democratic process and led to a partisan polarization that only grew worse with time. Perhaps worst of all, it nullified the pro-life movement’s constitutional arguments and enshrined in case law a constitutional interpretation that deprived the unborn of any constitutional rights.

Contrary to popular belief, legal abortion was widely available in the United States prior to Roe. Legal abortion for limited reasons had been introduced in Colorado and California in 1967. Abortion on demand (that is, legal abortion for any reason) was introduced to the United States in 1970, three years before Roe, when New York and three other states began permitting unrestricted abortions up to the twentieth or twenty-fourth week of pregnancy. Because New York and California’s abortion laws lacked a residency requirement, some abortion providers began offering travel packages for women to fly to New York or Los Angeles to terminate their pregnancies. Hundreds of thousands of American women did so; in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade, there were 586,760 legal abortions performed in the United States.

But prior to Roe, there was also a large, well-organized pro-life movement that was beginning to turn back the tide against abortion legalization. After losing numerous state legislative debates over abortion policy between 1967 and 1970, pro-lifers reorganized, and beginning in 1971, they experienced a string of uninterrupted legislative victories. By using fetal photographs to convince the public of the evils of abortion, and by making Protestants, Jews, and women the spokespersons for their movement in order to avoid charges of sectarianism or chauvinism, pro-lifers gained a hearing for their cause.

In the spring of 1971, pro-lifers defeated abortion legalization bills in all twenty-five of the state legislatures that considered them. The next year, their record was almost as successful: Only one state liberalized its abortion law, and it did so only under court order. Pro-lifers were equally successful at the ballot box. When Michigan and North Dakota introduced voter initiatives to legalize abortion in 1972, pro-lifers defeated both measures by wide margins. By the end of 1972, pro-lifers thought that they were probably within only one year of repealing New York’s permissive abortion law, and the director of Planned Parenthood’s Western Region division worried that pro-lifers would soon make abortion illegal in California too. “In the West we view ’73 as a difficult year for abortion,” he confided to a colleague in the summer of 1972.

Roe stopped a victorious pro-life movement in its tracks and deprived it of its gains through the democratic process. It forced dozens of states to legalize the procedure against the will of their citizens. When Roe was issued, only nineteen states had adopted liberalized abortion laws, and only four of those states had laws on the books that allowed abortion on demand. Roe required every state to allow abortion on demand.

In 1973, the first year after the Roe decision was issued, there were approximately 750,000 legal abortions performed in the United States—a 28-percent increase over the previous year. By 1980, after abortion clinics had been built across the nation, the annual abortion rate had doubled to 1.5 million.

Roe also made abortion more available to poor women, as the number of clinics quickly expanded after the decision. State and federal governments also funded abortions for poor women through Medicaid, prior to the Hyde Amendment. This availability led to higher abortion rates among poor and minority women. By 2008, 55 percent of the country’s legal abortions were performed on black or Hispanic women, while only 36 percent were performed on non-Hispanic whites. Forty-two percent of women who obtained abortions in 2008 were living below the poverty line. In 1973, by contrast, 75 percent of the women who obtained legal abortions were white. Many pro-lifers view this shift of abortion services to the poor and minorities as a sign that society has refused to offer substantive solutions to the problems that impoverished women face, and has instead simply encouraged them to terminate their pregnancies.

But what really made Roe an egregious decision, in the view of pro-lifers, was that it deprived a class of people of their constitutional rights by declaring them non-persons, something they thought the Supreme Court had not done since Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857. Prior to Roe, pro-life lawyers had found a receptive audience in some state and federal courts for their argument that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments’ due process clauses protected fetal life, and that the legalization of abortion on demand was therefore unconstitutional. As the Fifth Amendment states, under the Constitution no person can “be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” If fetuses were human persons, then their lives were constitutionally protected.

Pro-life lawyers believed that case law supported their argument that fetuses were indeed human persons, and that they therefore enjoyed the constitutionally protected right to life. Already, they pointed out, several courts had recognized fetal personhood in prenatal damage cases. In Smith v. Brennan (1960), for instance, the New Jersey state supreme court declared that because “medical authority recognizes that an unborn child is a distinct biological entity from the time of conception,” parents of an unborn child whose life was terminated in an accident had the right to sue for compensation for the loss of their child’s life. Similarly, in O’Neill v. Morse (1971), the Michigan state supreme court declared that the fetus was a “person” with an existence separate from the mother, and that “the phenomenon of birth is not the beginning of life; it is merely a change in the form of life.”

If fetuses were declared to be persons for the sake of prenatal damage claims, then the law could not deprive them of personhood in abortion cases, pro-life lawyers argued. Some courts accepted this argument. In 1967, for instance, the New Jersey state supreme court ruled in Gleitman v. Cosgrove that fetal birth defects caused by rubella did not constitute grounds for an abortion, because “the right to life is inalienable in our society.”

But the legal tide began turning against the pro-life movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s because of courts’ increasingly broad interpretations of the “right to privacy.” In 1965 the Supreme Court declared in Griswold v. Connecticut that the right to privacy gave married couples the right to use birth control without state interference. Citing that ruling, the California state supreme court declared in People v. Belous (1969) that “the fundamental right of the woman to choose whether to bear children” made restrictive abortion laws unconstitutional. Other state supreme courts adopted Belous’s reasoning. In 1972, courts in Florida, New Jersey, and other states struck down restrictive abortion laws.

Roe codified this new interpretation of the right to privacy in constitutional case law and prevented pro-life lawyers from ever again gaining a legal hearing for their argument that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments protect fetal life. By a vote of seven members, the Court deprived the unborn of the most basic rights of personhood and made it legal to terminate their existence. “The horrible truth is, the Court’s decision put our nation officially in favor of killing by law,” pro-life activist J. P. McFadden declared in National Review.

When the Supreme Court rejected their constitutional argument, pro-lifers dedicated their efforts to passing a Human Life Amendment (HLA) that would enshrine the protection of the fetus’s right to life in the Constitution. When the HLA failed to pass in Congress, after more than a decade of repeated attempts to bring it to a floor vote, pro-lifers began a campaign to reverse Roe by changing the composition of the Supreme Court. That campaign polarized the nation’s political parties, making each judicial nomination a battleground over abortion. After working for thirty years to change the composition of the Supreme Court, pro-lifers have not yet been able to find the five judicial votes needed to reverse Roe.

If Roe is overturned someday, its reversal will not end legal abortion in the United States, nor will it likely have an immediate impact on the abortion rate, because the states that are the largest providers of abortion have already signaled that they will continue to permit unrestricted abortion in the event that Roe is overturned. Nor would Roe’s reversal end the nation’s debate over abortion; in fact, Jon Shields is probably right to argue that the reversal would result in a pro-choice backlash.

Yet if Roe is reversed, no state legislature or lower court will ever again have to accept abortion as a sacrosanct constitutional right, and pro-lifers will once again have the freedom to argue, without fear of contempt or ridicule, that the Constitution protects the right to life of the unborn child. Roe cut off public discussion of these questions; the reversal of Roe would open it up again.

Surely all pro-lifers can agree that Roe is a travesty of justice against the unborn child’s right to life. Still, they need to make the right criticism of Roe.The decision neither started legal abortion nor hurt pro-choice momentum, but instead set back a trajectory of pro-life progress that is still reviving after forty years.