The first half of her opinion is subjective and based on a model of women's empowerment. This model is irrelevant in dated 80 year prior to the modern era. She then traps her logic in the idea that abortion guarantees men the right to walk away from their partners and leave women to cope with the consequences. Would it not follow the concept that abortion should be made available so a woman can move on with her life, as the male is by walking out, without the burden that a child may create?
Her next argument is the right of privacy and its guarantee that we are free from government intervention. By her own logic, should people not be free to choose what to do with their offspring, legitimate or otherwise? Collett believes that marriage is the civil institution by which people assume legal responsibility for children conceived during marital intercourse. Most people are married because they love one another. At the time most get married, children are not on the forefront of the mind, the wedding, the honeymoon, and the spouse are.
Third, for Ms. Collett is the idea of fetal life. She states that abortion should be allowed up to the end of the first trimester, because of her restatement of a medical opinion. “By the end of the 12th week, the fetus is a sentient moving being.” Therefore, before the 12th week the fetus should not be considered a living thing.
She moves her attack in a different direction, by claiming that most women panic and are depressed during pregnancy and that these are natural symptoms. But the panic and depression of pregnancy do not cloud one's mind enough to prevent a rational decision. She goes on to state that childbirth brings contentment. Explain the contentment of a fifteen-year-old girl living on the streets who does not have enough money to feed herself and her child?
Next, Collett uses what I will call her “Kidnapper Scenario.” These types of fantastic allusions have no place within a judicial opinion and emotional concerns should be set aside in favor of a more logical stance. Emotions are not for the courts, they are for human beings. The courts are supposed to be moral, that is all. Her story about the cabin boy who was cannibalized is merely an attempt to stir up support in a situation that cannot produce any logical basis in order to encourage her opinion.
Her final insult is the use of Carolene and its jurisprudence of protecting insular and discrete minorities in reference to fetuses of women who have been raped. A woman forced to raise her rapist's son or daughter is in fact being made to submit to the male model. Is this not what she herself argues so stringently against? By claiming that the rapist's child has rights too, Collett shows herself to be incapable of rational, logical, or even moral thoughts and this turns her entire opinion into a hoax.
Therefore, I return to agree with Rosen's assertion that the decision of Roe v Wade hindered the standard legislative process. It has marshaled the forces of anti-abortionists into a coalition that has allowed people to develop arguments which resemble those of Terri Stanton Collett's. Roe v. Wade needs to be overturned so that it can usher in the era that should have been established years prior. It does not currently exist because of a Supreme Court that was ill equipped to render a sound decision and caused vast consequences; instead it rushed towards a hasty ruling in the name of progress.
