By Tony Lauinger, State Chairman, Oklahomans for Life
Editor’s note. This appeared Sunday on the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade
Fifty years ago today, a black cloud descended over the United States. Its effects darkened our nation, poisoned our culture, destroyed our families, and slaughtered our children.
I left work in downtown Tulsa 50 years ago tonight, walked to the corner to cross the street, and saw the headline on the front of the evening paper: “Supreme Court Legalizes Abortion.”
I felt as though I’d been hit in the face with a two-by-four.
Our daughter Elizabeth had just been born three months earlier. My wife Phyllis had often told me when she felt our baby moving or kicking during those months before her birth. Now the highest court in the land had declared open season on killing children in the womb.
The Roe v. Wade case will go down in infamy as the most destructive assault on humanity in U.S. history.
The Court sought to wash its hands of responsibility for the bloodbath that followed by declaring, “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.” They feigned ignorance of basic biology — and then proceeded to authorize the destroying of whomever or whatever that is growing inside a mother. SIXTY-FOUR MILLION unborn children killed: that is the legacy of Roe v. Wade.
This nightmare came to a merciful end seven months ago when the Supreme Court overturned that heinous decision, making it possible once again to provide legal protection for babies in the womb. The June 24 Dobbs v. Jackson ruling reversed the Court’s deadly assault on humanity of 49 years earlier.
But now another lethal threat to future generations of Oklahoma children looms on the horizon in the form of an initiative petition attempting to put on the ballot a pro-abortion constitutional amendment for a statewide vote. The measure, if approved by voters, would insert in the Oklahoma Constitution an amendment authorizing unlimited abortion and repealing all of Oklahoma’s pro-life laws.
Such a petition was filed recently and then temporarily withdrawn by its pro-abortion sponsors for strategic reasons, but it will be filed again. We will keep in touch about developments.
On this 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, let us pause and say a prayer of thanks for the demise of that national nightmare as we prepare to move forward in the future to defend the sanctity of innocent human life.