You’ve just articulated with facile ease a tension on the legal front I have struggled to articulate for many years. So the tension - which seems to be rearing its ugly head even in the Republican Primary - is between natural law (what we know instinctively to be right) and... positive legal theory. Question: is the latter a synonym for common law? Even common law, expanding out to include many abortion cases rather than three exceptional ones Cyril Means used in SCOTUS testimony in 1973, condemned abortion going back to the 1300s.
Actually, I think the common law -- the "law of the commons," or the public sphere -- is the civil outgrowth of the natural law. At least this seems to be the case in the English-speaking world, where frequently the common law has been hostile to legal notions such as, for instance, "the divine right of kings."
The Framers did not believe that kings have any divine rights. And there was to be no king in America: SOVEREIGNTY VESTS DIRECTLY IN THE PEOPLE UNDER GOD. Ours was to be a system of rule of law (natural law as the Constitution distills it), not a rule of men. It seems legal positivists tend to reject this notion, although they frequently pay it lip service. Roe v. Wade is a prime example of this hypocrisy.
And so what has the Supreme Court wrought in Roe? The Roe holding seems designed to make us forget that the entire natural purpose of sex is procreation, not recreation. An unplanned child is seen as an inconvenient by-product of what the parties intended to be a purely recreational act. An inconvenienced mother-to-be can just rid herself of the inconvenience, and so quickly make herself available for further recreation.
I wonder how Darwinists manage to square such social facts with their evolutionary theory. People who don't or won't procreate contribute zilch to the gene pool and, thus, to natural selection and the fitness of the species.... And yet Darwinists such as Dawkins and Pinker evidently think that "free love" -- Love Means You Never Have To Say You're Sorry (For Anything) -- is just dandy. Just one more piece of evidence that these people really are deeply crazed.... The "pelvic revolution" seems to have trumped, not only life, but reason itself.
Well, just my two cents' worth, Lexinom. FWIW. Thank you so much for your beautifully reasoned essay posts!