Nikolas Nikas argues that "the overturning of Roe is inevitable." He also points out that in all of America's major and minor wars since 1775, the total dead is 1,329,991--"or an amount equal to just one year of Roe’s infernal tally." Nikas also urges both perspective and perseverance, for
as social-reform movements go, the 34-year struggle to overturn Roe and its judicial progeny is still a relatively young one.
The lessons of the long struggle for black civil rights are instructive. From the advent of the first African slave being taken to the American colonies in 1619 to the beginning of the Civil War was a period of 246 years. The cause for life is, in comparison, only 34 years old.
The ratification of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in 1865 to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 was a period of approximately 100 years. We who fight for life having been laboring for only one third as long.
From the announcement in 1896 by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” public accommodations for blacks and whites was constitutional to the reversal of that decision by the same Supreme Court in 1954 in the Brown v. Board of Education case was a period of 58 years — almost a quarter of a century longer than our present struggle.
The period from the Civil Rights Amendment in 1964 to the present is approximately 42 years, eight years longer than we have presently struggled. The lesson is that American social-reform movements sometimes take time. We will win the battle to overturn Roe if we do not lose heart.
