Conservatives applauded Justice Samuel Alito’s recent opinion in the Dobbs case holding that there was no “right to abortion” in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause and reversing the holding in Roe v. Wade. The result was correct, but a constitutional law professor friend confirmed my assessment that “the majority cheated.” Here is why. And you can read the very short opinion that I would have written if the goal was to uphold the Constitution as written.

The reversal of Roe v. Wade by the United States Supreme Court last Friday is certainly cause for rejoicing among those who are pro-life. And I do rejoice. But a profound conversation is lurking below the surface in the opinions of the various justices. It will be a critical mistake for Christians not to understand that conversation and not to consider how best to join it. Not joining the conversation and not doing so wisely will perpetuate our existence under what is, in principle (as I will explain) a tyrannical state and federal government.

Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked abortion decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization seems to have put many pro-life policy advocates in a rush to enact newer, stricter laws prohibiting doctors from performing abortion procedures. But by Justice Alito’s legal logic, all of us, the born and the unborn, are not much more than an aborted fetus. To be pro-life, one’s view of law and the constitution must go much deeper than prohibiting abortion procedures.

I am delighted that the U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to reverse its abortion precedents, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The opinion does a great job dismantling the faulty historical analysis employed in Roe between abortion and its treatment under the common law. However, one thing I have not mentioned previously was particularly grievous to me in two ways.

People have begun to protest the leaked U.S. Supreme Court decision that would overrule Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey outside the homes of several Justices. I believe the Court has been fostering for decades the climate of threats and violence the Justices are now experiencing for the following reasons.

Pro-life advocates are naturally excited that the United States Supreme Court may be ready to reverse its abortion-rights jurisprudence.  But I found the leaked opinion amusing.  One such amusement was the Court's opening and closing its opinion with the assertion that abortion presents a “profound moral question” and then proceeding to ignore it. Truthfully, Justice Alito’s opinion is more despicable and disgraceful than the Court’s treatment of slaves and their descendants in the infamous decision involving slave Dred Scott.

“Barrett, Breyer, and Baloney” is not the name of a law firm that practices before the U.S. Supreme Court. Rather it is a description of my reaction to comments made this week by two Justices—one liberal, the other conservative (perhaps)—about the cries of liberals to expand the number of Justices on the Court (“court packing”). Of course, those cries intensified after the Court refused to intervene to prevent Texas’ abortion statute from going into effect. The Court created its own mess.

Eighty briefs were filed with the United States Supreme Court by pro-life organizations and persons in support of Mississippi’s constitutional authority to ban all elective abortions after 15 weeks. My name went on one of those briefs as its author. A lawyer friend and colleague whose state organization joined on that brief said, “This theory is brilliant…Florida will sign on to the brief.” Brilliant or, as another friend of mine says, “evil genius”? You decide.

It has been building for a couple of years, but it hit me like a ton of bricks on Wednesday that the basis for my pro-life advocacy for the last 20 plus years has been predominately upside down and backwards. Thankfully, that mistake will not be made in a friend of the court brief soon to be submitted to the United States Supreme Court on that issue that God led me to write.

Last month the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear a case involving Mississippi’s ban on all elective abortion from and after fifteen weeks gestation. The options before the Court in terms of whether to affirm Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v, Casey are limited. But the key for conservatives isn’t just the reversal of Roe, but the grounds on which it might be reversed. Seeing Roe and Casey only in terms of abortion is a huge mistake.