Roe v. Wade is Obsolete

Here's really what it comes down to in the "constitutionality" of bills such as HB 1293, South Dakota's abortion ban that was voted down in senate committee yesterday: the "personhood" of the fetus.

From today's Rapid City Journal:

Schmidt is not a member of the Senate State Affairs Committee, but he led off testimony for the bill, starting with the 1973 Supreme Court decision that affirmed the constitutional right of women to seek an abortion legally. “Every factual assumption made in Roe v. Wade had been proven to be false and incorrect,” he said.

What Schmidt is talking about are the multitude of assumptions that were made in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision--assumptions that assumed the unborn child was not a person deserving of constitutional protection.

Since then, we have learned an incredible amount about fetal development. Some of the things we've learned include the early development of the nervous system so that unborn children likely can feel pain as early as 8-9 weeks development. Genetic research has also shown us that unborn children have completely unique DNA at conception, making them not a part of the mother's tissue, but a separate and distinct human being.

We have also learned a great deal about the devastating physical and psychological effects of abortion on women who have them.

Judge Henry Blackmun, the chief Supreme Court judicial activist behind the Roe v. Wade decision, admitted at the time that if the personhood of the unborn child could be established, the case for abortion "collapses."

That is what the findings of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion determined: that the scientific evidence gathered since 1973 establishes the personhood of the unborn child.

This means the Roe v. Wade decision is definitively unconstitutional.