I graduated in 1970. It would be 3 yr before the Supreme Court came down on the side of making abortion legal. i remember all the protests to make abortion safe,affordable and rare.This was the slogan. The arguments for abortion were about the same as they are now. Men should not be able to force women to carry a pregnancy to term. Women have the right to control their own bodies. The government should stay out of our bedrooms. Same arguments, different day. i don’t recall a lot of protests against abortion. The pro abortion side seemed louder and more determined at the time. Prior to the Court decision in Roe V Wade abortion was legal in the states of Hawaii, New York, Washington and Alaska. In the state of Texas it was legal only in cases where the pregnancy was a threat to the woman’s life. This is where Norma McCorvey would end up seeking an abortion for reasons outside the reason the law would permit.

McCorvey was referred to Texas attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, who were interested in challenging anti-abortion laws.

“In court documents, McCorvey became known as “Jane Roe.”

Source: https://www.history.com/topics/womens-rights/roe-v-wade

She never aborted the baby. The baby was put up for adoption. In later years Norma would become pro life, convert to Catholicism and accuse the attorney’s of using her for their own purposes.

i can trace 3 cultural shifts that affected abortion and our view of it.

My parents generation did not have it easy. They survived the Great Depression and WWII.

They grew up at a time when people would wait until they were married before becoming intimate.

Children were welcome and family life was everything. Obviously, their generation gave our country the baby boom. I think in their desire to give their children a better life than the one they had they gave those children an easier life than the one they had. The 60’s became a time of cultural revolution. The Vietnam war threw the country into turmoil. There was the rise of the feminist movement. Civil rights played a prominent role in the same period. Between the rise of feminism, the anti war movement and civil rights activism it was quite a change from the Kennedy years that started with peace and prosperity. I don’t recall any unwed mothers when we were in school. Every one of my own classmates graduated. I do recall what we called ‘shotgun weddings’ occasionally. It was expected that if a woman got in a ‘family way’ that the man would do the right thing and marry her. Abortion was unheard of in our community.

On the other hand we were questioning the values of the previous generation. We threw the baby out with the bathwater.They wanted to give us a better life than the one they had but they may have made it too easy for us albeit with the best of intentions. Instead of considering whether any of those values might have been worth hanging onto we just threw them all out the window wholesale. So by 1973 it wasn’t surprising that the Supreme Court was ruling on abortion. It shouldn’t have been anymore surprising that the no of unwed mothers and illegitimate births took off.

What is ironic is that in the previous generation when artificial contraception (the pill)and abortion weren’t options the numbers of unwed mothers and illegitimate births were low. You’d think the opposite would be true. It was when artificial contraception and abortion became options that the no of unwed mothers and illegitimate births started to rise. There had to be a cause and that cause would have to be a shift in morals-a rejection of traditional values- and the feminist movement.

My parents, probably like many parents then, were Kennedy Democrats. i became a liberal Democrat. Yes, a lot of us fell under the influence of liberalism. i didn’t give much thought to the feminist movement or the abortion debate. For me it was the anti war movement. i wasn’t exactly pro life at the time either. You couldn’t be a liberal and pro life. Liberalism and the Democrat party became synonymous. My parents saw the Democrat party as the party of the working class and poor. I saw the Democrat party as a champion of the oppressed and pacifism. I don’t think they ever caught on that the Democrat party they knew was changing. They spent their whole lives actively supporting Democrat candidates. They went to all the local fundraisers and meet and greets. I spent my time protesting the war. They never saw where it was going.

Abortion became legal and i never questioned whether or not it should be. It wasn’t until i did start to question it that i began the journey to conservatism and would actually vote Republican over,.of all the issues, abortion and pacifism. They opposed every war but supported abortion without question. I just couldn’t see there weren’t any circumstances where war might be justified or circumstances where abortion wasn’t. The confirmation hearings for Justice Thomas were an eye opener. i didn’t buy the accusations brought against him or the fervor with which the Democrats opposed him. It was pure hate. Senator Joe Biden was especially hostile to Thomas. They didn’t strike me as being compassionate, tolerant or fair people. Fast Forward: the Russia Collusion lie against Donald Trump was the last straw. The Antifa/BLM insurrection was flat out craziness. Liberalism itself was just plain lunacy.

The Democrat party is not the Kennedy Democrat party at all. That was long gone years ago. They are full blown Marxists with no respect for our Judeo-Christian foundation, our fundamental God given rights-the state is everything-or the Constitution which is supposed to be the law of the land. They want abortion on demand without any restrictions. If they don’t get their own way they resort to all kinds of unacceptable behavior including violence. i can’t see what the Democrat party has given us except lawlessness and immorality. Forget democracy. Mob rule is not democracy. I heard Alan Dershowitz the other night losing his mind over the justices ruling on Roe V Wade. Don’t let him fool you. He’s a bona fide liberal. i can spot one having been one. They have to defend abortion at all costs.

Unfortunately i think out of all the upheaval of the 60 ‘s the culmination of it with legalized abortion had to be the most dreadful path our country could have taken. You can’t say it lived up to the slogan of rare. I don’t even know how they came up with the argument legalizing it would make it rare. Now the Democrats are going to try and use abortion as a political issue during the mid terms. Would they sink that low? You bet they would. They would do anything to hang onto power and they can’t run on the economy. Biden is an abysmal failure. If they think they can win on the abortion issue they will use it.I can’t imagine such a disregard for human life as to use it to score political points. I know the narrative they will be writing.

They’re going to frame it as an attack on women and women’s rights. They’re going to frame it as a restriction on the right to choose. They’re going to frame it as imposing beliefs on the American people.

They will even resort to calling it racist and say it causes a hardship for blacks and other minorities. The narrative that has been the most disturbing to me lately is how they frame our support of Pres Trump as an attack on democracy. The left is adept at framing narratives; of course the media is their propaganda tool and that helps them immensely. Conservatives are at a disadvantage with cable news putting out whatever story they choose. More often that not though the Republicans don’t handle it well. Donald Trump did and his own party called him mean and ‘un-presidential’. Insert eye roll here.

I, for one, look forward to an honest discussion about abortion. i honestly don’t think the SCOTUS ruling changed much. The states were already deciding on their own abortion laws. All the Supreme Court did, in my opinion, was recognize what had been taking place anyway. It was a case of ruling meeting reality.

In the next blog entry i’d like to break down the 2 sides of the debate especially the narrative of the left.