At a recent event titled Life After Roe, which was hosted by the Hale Institute of New Saint Andrews College, a panel of four legal specialists discussed the Dobbs ruling which overturned Roe v Wade. Both pro-life and pro-choice positions were present on this panel made up of two legal professors and two litigators. Read this for an overview of the evening.
The striking thing was how this panel captured quite clearly the crossroads before America.
The Dobbs ruling marks a significant transition for the country as we move from Old America into New America. The order of the panel nicely illustrated this transition. On the left, there was a pro-lifer and pro-choicer, both from Old America, who had one kind of conversation. On the right, there was a pro-lifer and a pro-choicer, both from New America, and they had a different kind of conversation. In New America, the end of Roe is an earthshaking fault line that highlights the divide in this country and the reality that there is almost no common ground between the two sides anymore. The striking thing is that this divide runs not only between pro-lifers and pro-choicers, but also between Old America and New America.
Old America
The two panelists on the left illustrate Old America: Francis Beckwith of Baylor University and Mary Treuthart of Gonzaga University.
These two panelists were both older professors: one a man and the other a woman. At one point, Treuthart told the audience that she was born Dec 9, 1952. According to Wikipedia, Beckwith was born in 1960. So both of them lived before Roe.
That is a key part of Old America: it can remember a time before Roe. This means its perspective on Roe is one of transience: Roe wasn’t always here. Old America can remember the time before Roe. That is a different perspective than the panelists in New America.
In discussing the Dobbs ruling, the two panelists from Old America clearly differed with each other: Beckwith was clearly pro-life and Treuthart was clearly pro-choice. But as they conversed, there was a lot of common ground that they shared: academic experience, life before Roe, and knowledge of the contrary position.
Both of these panelists were circumspect about their positions and reflective on both sides of the issue. Treuthart, the pro-choicer, did this the most, giving one the impression that she was from the old school liberal position: everyone can have a voice at the table. At one point, she even pointed out an ironic flaw in the dissenting opinion on Dobbs.
She remarked that the justices who dissented on the Dobbs ruling hold to a living constitution approach, which allows for the constitution to be changed over time: some things get old and can be done away with. She then added, “The irony of the whole thing is, if you believe that the constitution is a living document, then can you at the same time want to focus on stare decisis or past precedent? So that to me is one of the ironies. So if it is living so shouldn’t we be changing up some of these things that were decided or interpreted previously?”
In other words, can the dissent really dissent to Roe being overturned after fifty years? After all, that was fifty years ago: times have changed and so we should change with them, right?
Beckwith and Treuthart clearly stand in Old America. They know a time before Roe and so now, even with the Dobbs ruling, this is just the next step in an ongoing conversation about abortion.
New America
The two panelists on the right illustrate New America: Megan Wold, former clerk to Justice Samuel A. Alito, and Jenna Newmark, a Litigation Counselor for Planned Parenthood.
While they were sitting at the same table as Beckwith and Treuthart, Wold and Newmark had a very different conversation.
These were two young professionals, both women, one pregnant (Wold). The rift between these two could not have been stronger. Both were friendly and professional but there was a noticeable crackle around the conversation. Wold, with the pro-life position, brought forward evidence to support her position, as well as pushing clear counter arguments at her opponent. One got the impression that she was there to fight. Newmark, with the pro-choice position, was also there to fight but she largely relied on emotional appeals and what-if scenarios.
Newmark at the beginning of her statement said directly that she thought Dobbs was wrongly decided. In contrast, Treuthart, the pro-choicer from Old America, never said that explicitly during her comments, although she would agree with Newmark’s sentiment.
At one point, Newmark even admitted, “I don’t think I have had many conversations like this with anyone who is pro-life in my home state.” That admission is a profound one to make, but one that is telling about the pro-choice position in New America. It is not really familiar with the Pro-life position at all.
At the end, in her last comment, Newmark said: “I have only known a world in which abortion was legal and I’m sure Ms. Wold has too.”
This is a key insight into New America. For a generation that has only lived under Roe, the end of Roe is an incredibly profound event, something that Old America may not really understand. This is a key difference between Old America and New America. Because New America has only ever known Roe, it sees the Dobbs decision as more profoundly earthshaking than Old America does. That reality will fuel the growing divide in the country.
Concluding Observations
With this brief overview of the panel, I have given a sketch of the Old America that is fading away and the New America that is on the rise. It is critical that we understand the New America in front of us as I have shown it in Wold and in Newmark.
Newmark and the new pro-choice side are isolated from pro-lifers. This means that they have little experience dealing with the pro-life side. The pro-choicers often use emotional appeals and what-if scenarios to argue their point. The New pro-choicers have never lived in a world without Roe, which means they are in unknown territory. While an Old America pro-choicer knows what it was like before Roe, a New America pro-choicer knows nothing of that age. This is a crazy, unknown world to them and so they will be desperate to get Roe back. Key examples of this desperation are Eric Swalwell’s ad about a mother being arrested for an abortion and also what happened with Pro Life Paul Vaughn being arrested.
Wold and the new pro-life position are sharp and knowledgeable. They have had to grow up under Roe which forced them to use logic and sound arguments in order to get the legal win of Dobbs. This means the new pro-lifers are well reasoned and articulate. However, as seen in the Dobbs case, much of the pro-life position is framed in a negative way.
In Dobbs, Alito and the Supreme Court ruled merely that Roe was wrongly decided. They left the question of when life begins unanswered. In this way, the ruling was a negative ruling: reversing a wrong but not setting forth clearly the right position.
In many ways, the Dobbs ruling captures the pro-lifers of New America. They are primarily in the position of having to say no to everything that the liberal side tries. That places them on the defensive rather than the offensive side. So even though Dobbs was a clear win for pro-lifers, it was a defensive win. We still have much ground to make up.
To illustrate this point, I highlight a comment from Wold, the pro-lifer of New America. She was talking about gender inequality and how some think that pregnancy makes women unequal to men. She said about that claim: “And that really depends on believing that a woman’s capacity to be pregnant and to bear children somehow diminishes her, vis-a-vis a man. And I’m probably not a fair person to ask, being very pregnant myself, but I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that women are diminished by their ability to have and bear children.”
This clearly resonated with the audience. One voice in the crowd called out “Amen” which was followed by a round of clapping from the audience.
However, Wold’s comment, while important and true, was still stated in a defensive position. She said that she didn’t think pregnancy diminishes women. But what if she had stated a positive argument? She could have said, “Actually women getting pregnant is their superpower.” That would have brought the house down.
This brings me to my concluding observation: New America is represented by two women. The way the ground is changing right now I am seeing more women leading on both sides, especially in politics. And in the pro-life camp, I am seeing mostly women leading the charge. The pro-life cause is important work, so God bless them, as He did to the Hebrew midwives in Egypt. But this panel left me wondering, where are the pro-life men in New America? Where are the men leading in the political realm?
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All Pictures used by permission from New Saint Andrews College.
All quotes are taken from the author’s audio recording of the event.
