CREATORS SYNDICATE

move to avoid a bright light shined on the mother’s belly. They reveal fetuses placing their hands in front of their faces, palms out, sucking their thumbs, getting hiccups and smiling. Some interpret these smiles as random muscle movements rather than true smiles, since born babies rarely smile until six weeks old. But try telling the besotted parents who glimpse a smile on a sonogram that it means nothing. That’s the way we’re wired. Ultrasound is like those cameras in the cave. It reveals the humanity of those inside a dark, inaccessible place.

We are now poised to have the national debate that has been thwarted by the Supreme Court for 45 years on the legality of abortion. If Judge Brett Kavanaugh is con-

abortion prior to viability or to protect the life or health of the mother.

If Roe were overturned, all of those laws and many more would be up for debate. How 50 state arguments would turn out is anyone’s guess, but even leaving the merits to one side, it would be a very healthy thing for our democracy to grapple with tough questions instead of bowing to the nine lawyers on the court. Even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg acknowledged in 2013 that by taking the question out of the hands of legislatures (and thus of voters), the Supreme Court did a disservice to the nation. “That was my concern,” she said, “that the court had given opponents of access to abortion a target to aim at relentlessly. ... My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum that was on the side of change.”

I believe that abortion is a moral wrong. But above all I believe that Americans deserve to be heard on the subject, and that is now a