Second, abortion advocates at the time of Roe were caught up in the wake of two decades of fear about a growing world population. A widely popular 1968 book by Dr. Paul Ehrlich declared that "the battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." The Journal of the American Medical Association published an article warning "if we breed like rabbits, in the long run we have to live and die like rabbits." The titles of popular books spoke for themselves. Ehrlich's best-seller was called The Population Bomb. Another was titled Too Many Asians.

In this vortex of fear about a near future in which there would simply be too many people on earth to feed, abortion seemed almost scientific, at least to those short-sighted enough to believe Ehrlich and his ilk. But we now know there was no "population bomb" (nor are there "too many Asians"). Yes, the population has grown, but famines and starvation did not. Instead, life expectancy and average incomes rose due to trade, technology, and free enterprise - not population control.

Third, the Justices in Roe "thought they were riding a wave of cultural sentiment in favor of abortion," says Forsythe. They never anticipated the backlash - the push for constitutional amendments, the thousands of people who march on the Supreme Court every anniversary of Roe, or the way the decision dominates the nomination process for Supreme Court Justices.