Five many years after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion, the neuralgic issue stays on the forefront of politics each national and native, with religious groups (including the Catholic Church) playing a very important role in ongoing debates about how and when and if abortion ought to be legal. The court’s reversal of Roe in June 2022 with Dobbs v. Jackson confirmed the truth that the problem will proceed to be outstanding in our political, legal and non secular landscapes.
What did the editors of America must say on the problem of legal abortion on the time of Roe v. Wade? A glance back through America’s archives reveals varied responses depending on the politics of the day, the composition of the editorial board, the prevailing climate within the Catholic Church by way of what moral issues got priority, and the prudential judgments of the editors themselves. Opposition to abortion on the grounds that it was the taking of innocent human life was a consistent point of each editorial on the topic, but how that opposition was parsed out in legal terms (and the way legal issues were related to moral claims) was one other query.
Here is how the editors responded within the immediate aftermath of Roe v. Wade in 1973.
While America’s pages have at all times offered commentary from a broad range of contributors, it’s value noting that with few exceptions, the editors were only Jesuits for much of the magazine’s history, and it was not until 1999 that a girl served on the editorial board. For many of its history, the magazine has been run by priests and professors; only more recently, for the second half of Roe’s nearly 50 years, were lay people and oldsters also across the table at editorial meetings.
Here is how the editors responded within the immediate aftermath of Roe v. Wade in 1973.
At first
Within the weeks after Roe became the law of the land on Jan. 22, 1973, America’s editorials showed a relatively matter-of-fact response. A brief editorial in the problem of Feb. 3 said the editors were “dismayed, respectful and determined” within the aftermath of a ruling that meant “unborn children now enjoy no legal protection against their moms for the greater a part of their lives within the womb.” They called the choice “long on history but short on science,” but said, “[n]evertheless, we respect the court’s decision, first, because the choice needed to be made, second, since the court needed to make it, and at last, since the court faced its task truthfully.” The editors vowed to “remain determined to do every part we are able to to guard the lives of the unborn” and “proceed our efforts to call attention to solutions for private, social and economic problems that motivate many abortions.”
One other short editorial on Feb. 10 noted the danger of “a level of social coercion” for ladies to have abortions now that it was legal nationwide and noted that “the Roman Catholic Church in the US faces a lot of decisions regarding the alternatives now possible by way of legislative motion.” Additionally they emphasized the excellence between the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion and the necessity for a pastoral response to those making the alternative to have one: “The Church must give serious consideration to the difference between its perennial teaching function in this fashion and the growing need for services, primarily in the world of counseling, that the brand new situation calls for.”
Charles Whelan, S.J., an achieved legal scholar who had actually argued a case before the Supreme Court himself only a yr earlier, was an associate editor of America on the time, and he wrote an “Of Many Things” column on Roe for that Feb. 10 issue. “That is the law of the land. It’ll proceed to be so, at the least for the subsequent few years and possibly for a really very long time,” he noted. His advice for America’s readers was straightforward: Opponents of legal abortion should seek to determine “conscience clauses” for health care staff who didn’t want to perform them; advocacy and legislative work ought to be done on the state level to pass laws to stop abortion-on-demand from becoming a reality; and “a long-term effort to vary the law announced by the Supreme Court” ought to be undertaken, either by constitutional amendment or through further litigation before the court.
The context within the nation
A reader may note a certain muted tone to all three responses, and in actual fact the editors only rarely returned to the problem for the remaining of 1973. Actually, coverage of abortion as a problem was way more limited editorially immediately after the choice than within the many years since. Why?
First, probably nobody in 1973 thought that Roe would end in greater than 1,000,000 abortions a yr, a number far exceeding that of European countries with liberalized abortion laws (even today, the abortion rate in the US dwarfs that of other Western nations). Except for California, where abortions skyrocketed after Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act in 1967, most U.S. states that legally allowed abortion before Roe had not seen huge increases within the abortion rate. That will change rapidly within the years following.
Actually, coverage of abortion as a problem was way more limited editorially immediately after the choice than within the many years since. Why?
Second, the choice got here at a time of incredible political tumult around other issues in the US. January 1973, it seems, was a month for the ages. Former president Lyndon B. Johnson actually died on the day Roe was announced, Jan. 22, 1973; Richard Nixon’s second inauguration was held two days later, on Jan. 24. The war in Vietnam—which had doomed Mr. Johnson’s political profession and was proving a vexing issue for President Nixon as well—was still going full-tilt (and poorly) in its final years. And the primary trial within the “long national nightmare” of Watergate had begun on Jan. 10, with suggestions of Mr. Nixon’s involvement already within the press.
The context within the church
The Catholic Church in the US also faced many other issues which will have seemed more pressing than abortion and which received far greater coverage in America’s editorials on the time. Eight years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, five years after the promulgation of Pope Paul VI’s “Humanae Vitae” encyclical and within the midst of rapidly changing social mores, American Catholics had many other issues to debate—amongst them a church that seemed itself to be changing dramatically day by day.
For instance, a widespread exodus from religious life and the diocesan priesthood that had begun within the second half of the Sixties was still ongoing in 1973; at the identical time, vocations to the priesthood and non secular life had plummeted. Along with the lack of personnel, these phenomena had also caused a crisis of confidence across the viability of many church structures taken without any consideration. Religious habits were vanishing in most places as well, and formerly semi-cloistered communities of non secular were adopting latest ways of life.
The Catholic Church in the US faced many other issues which will have seemed more pressing than abortion and which received far greater coverage in America’s editorials on the time.
Together with a soaring divorce rate, Catholics had also began applying for (and receiving) annulments by the tens of hundreds, only a decade faraway from a time when annulments nationwide didn’t break 500. Sweeping changes in social conventions around premarital sex, cohabitation and contraception combined with those realities to change the definition of typical family life for a lot of Catholics. The widespread dissent (private and non-private) from “Humanae Vitae” alone was a marker of how dramatically Catholic life was changing.
Lots of the other externals of Catholic life seemed up for grabs in 1973. Mass was now within the vernacular; weekly confession was becoming a thing of the past; Catholics were attending secular schools and universities in increasing numbers, and the Catholic laity was for the primary time becoming higher educated than the priests and men and girls religious who had long taught them.
America’s editorial stances in 1973 reflected each the optimism and the confusion and discombobulation of the time. The editors that yr weren’t capable of predict how deeply divisive abortion and the varied attempts to resolve the query on the Supreme Court would grow to be within the many years to follow. Their opposition to legal abortion was a given, as was advocacy for legislative efforts to limit it and offer obligatory support to avoid the necessity for abortion—a stance no different from that of America today. But in a church and a world so different from today, the hope for discussion of the problem to generate more light than heat seemed more attainable than it has in recent times.
•••
While a comprehensive account of America’s editorials regarding abortion since Roe v. Wade was decided would run to book length, a sample of several over time helps for instance each the changing political and legal environment around abortion and the consistent problems with protection for unborn life and social safety net support for pregnant women and for youngsters. The editorials also consistently engage with the constitutional challenges of the Supreme Court’s rulings on abortion.
1992: Anticipating and responding to the Supreme Court’s decision in Casey v. Planned Parenthood
2000: Responding to F.D.A. approval of the RU-486 “abortion pill”
2007: Criticizing Amnesty International’s support for abortion as a human right
2012: Advocating for pro-life initiatives along with opposition to abortion
2019: Explaining how Roe v. Wade has made abortion politics unattainable
2022: Responding to the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade
