Recently, in the media, the question was raised, “Will Roe last 50 years?” Perhaps the best way to answer such a question is in a roundabout manner, with a brief walk through history. We need not venture many centuries back to find some helpful hints. Just two hundred years will be plenty sufficient.

I suggest that a rational, civilized people will continually endeavor to review history in order to learn important lessons. Lessons that appear nearly impossible to learn any other way.

One might look back in Antebellum America and ask, how could people who held themselves up as so proper, also behave in such a monstrous manner? How could those people treat their fellow man in such a depraved regard? How could such refined people bring themselves to auction off the babies of their enslaved help? How could a reasonable person, knowing that some mothers suffered so dreadfully that they hung themselves in order to escape the misery of repeatedly losing their children, think such an existence was even imaginable, not to mention tolerable?

Societal insanity. That’s how.

For another example, one might wonder how, 100 years later, in 1930s Germany, could the most advanced society in the history of the world have come to not just tolerate, but embrace the systematic hunting down and execution of their neighbors – and buy the story that doing so was the cure to their society’s ills? How could such a society stand by and watch the train cars full of wailing people, of all ages, roll by, without intervening and bringing it to a halt? It’s hard to overstate the brutality in this period.

Societal insanity. That’s how.

Here’s one thing that’s not in dispute: In all of those desperate, outrageous and inexcusable times in history, it’s well understood that such madness was stoppable. Stoppable, if only the average person had pried themselves from the collective stupor in which they dwelled, and demanded change. If only, the madness would have ceased.

In the historic Nuremberg trial, recounted in the movie, “Judgment at Nuremberg,” an Allied attorney asked a German general how they could live their lives, knowing that Jews were being hauled away, he answered, “We were busy tending our gardens.”

So, with the perspective that we can gain with temporal separation, it’s easy for us to marvel at the complete madness of past times. We’re not just confused about how such craziness could have existed. We also have no hesitancy in condemning those past behaviors as barbaric.

But then we jump back to our current reality and somehow we lose all ability to discern right from wrong. Taking this little historical trip, and reflecting on our society, it becomes obvious how fickle mankind is, and how easily we can rationalize away atrocities. How we can justify our actions.

Let’s get real. It’s no secret what happens thousands of time per day across our nation in the abortion chambers. That’s where the pre-born are dismembered within their mothers’ womb and their bodies reconstructed in a tray to ensure that no “fetal material” is left behind – because it would cause an infection. That’s where babies are parted out, and the killings are scheduled to align with orders for organs. All the while, we call it “health care,” “women’s rights” and “progress.”

Only an insane people can live in a world where, if a mother wants her pregnancy to continue, we call it a baby, and plan accordingly, buying outfits and painting the nursery. And if the pregnancy is deemed inconvenient, we refer to the growing baby as a “parasite,” a “cancer,” and “products of conception.”

That’s insanity.

Call me a dreamer, but I maintain optimism that we can turn from our ignorant, wicked ways. By appealing to our humane instincts and righteousness, we can bring about this needed change in society. We need not continue down this destructive path. The choice is our’s.

I suggest that a more fundamental question than, “Will Roe turn 50?” is “Are we a civilized people?”

Charlie Danaher is a mechanical engineer, freelance writer and former newspaper columnist in Boulder. He served on the board of Colorado Right to Life and is a former vice chair of the Boulder County Republicans.