Currently, a very mistaken court, in 1973, made the killing of unborn individual human beings something legal in our society. Not exactly. What Roe did was strike down all state laws regarding abortion, whatever their approach - that's important. Abortion was in fact legal in many states, though there was the facade of medical necessity that was imposed - a requirement that was surely skirted on many an occasion. I dunno how many abortions were performed before Roe, though I have seen estimates as high as a million and a quarter annual.
Roe also gives the states the option of banning all abortions (w/ a life of the mother exception) after viability, a line which is blurry at best (depends how you define "viable"), but begins at around 24 weeks.
The single principle of self-defense is at the heart of both the above sub-sets, but should not carry an automatic right to kill the innocent if it is possible to save the innocent unborn without violating the woman's right to choosing self-defense.
Many folks in the pro-life movement would disagree with this approach WRT rape/incest, the rationale being that the unborn shouldn't be killed simply because they were conceived due to a criminal act - it isn't their fault, after all.
Snidely
I've seen fairly accurate CDC numbers that show a max of just over 300,000 abortions (registered, legal and illegal, incidentally) per year prior to the Roe 'ruling', nationwide. Even in the first two or three years following the Roe and then Doe v Bolton decision, the number of registered abortions was well below 400,000 per year. [In the interest of honesty, those numbers do not reflect the D&C's done where it is very possible a pregnancy was aborted within the first six weeks from conception but the procedure was registered as treating 'endometrial infection' or removal of a 'lost IUD' (which was the case with my first wife when we became pregnant with a Dalcon Shield in situ, decades ago).]
I'm afraid I myst disagree regarding the following: "Roe also gives the states the option of banning all abortions (w/ a life of the mother exception) after viability, a line which is blurry at best (depends how you define "viable"), but begins at around 24 weeks." The subsequent rulings such as Doe v Bolton and Casey v Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania accomplished the broad spectrum sanctioned serial killing. With the Stenberg v Carhardt ruling we had reached the insane state of legalizing infanticide as I characterized it in my post to you. The right to a dead baby was realized in all its demonic glory as embraced by the likes of Boxer, Harkin, Murray, Kennedy, et al.
As to the value of realtime video of smiling babies in the womb from even as early as 18 weeks (I'll post a vid of a 26 week old at the end of this screed), the visualizations serve to cancel some of the dehumanization achieved by the forces aligned for legal serial killing, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to then make the connections so many of us at FR offer regarding the earlier ages of these little ones. If you've not read it, I have an essay on my profile page that addresses the individual humanity of the earliest ages of these newly conceived little ones (it's the second one posted there).
