End of the Roe?
How to panic the panicky
HERE IS an interesting comment from an American judge of some note. It has to do with abortion. And the courts. And this comment wasn’t made all that long ago:
Roe v. Wade “halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believe, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue.”
NB: The speaker was Ruth Bader Ginsburg—before she was Madam Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—at NYU some years back. She was always a supporter of abortion rights, being a good liberal, but she also had a legal mind, and thought legal thoughts.
Boy howdy, you would have thought the American Way of Life, or at least death, had been changed completely Tuesday morning. The United States Supreme Court had been debating an abortion case, internally, and somebody apparently leaked a draft majority opinion to the press.
More from Bloomberg:
“The draft opinion, which Politico said it got from a person familiar with the court’s deliberations, was written by Justice Samuel Alito and has at least preliminary support from four other Republican-appointed justices, the publication said. The court is scheduled to rule by July in the case.
“‘Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,’ Alito wrote, according to Politico. ‘It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.’
“A ruling overturning Roe would be transformational—legally, politically and socially. Twenty-six states would be likely to ban most abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that backs abortion rights. That shift would come even as countries elsewhere liberalize their abortion laws . . . .”
The headlines were written in all bold, ALL-CAP, and underlined. Hunt on for the leaker! Protests erupt! Could reshape midterms!
And, of course, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi were heard from.
“If the report is accurate, the Supreme Court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past 50 years—not just on women but on all Americans,” the Senate majority leader and speaker of the House said in a joint statement. “The Republican-appointed Justices’ reported votes to overturn Roe v. Wade would go down as an abomination, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history.”
One of the worst in modern history? Does that include Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson and so many others that allowed—solidified— bigotry in the law?
Let’s all try to keep our heads. Especially our friends on the left. As much as we kinda enjoy it when progressives go apoplectic, this seems over the top considering that if the ruling was accurately leaked, abortion isn’t going to be illegal.
LET’S JUST assume, in the name of science, that the reports are accurate. What if this court changes the 1973 Roe ruling? What would happen?
For starters, the United States wouldn’t be the only nation among the western democracies that has legal abortion forced on it by judicial fiat instead of the voters, or at least their elected representatives in various statehouses. Abortion clinics might be harder to find in certain precincts, but they wouldn’t disappear.
The matter would go back to the states—where it should have stayed—for more debate.
We’ve said this much before: Americans love to argue. And many Americans love to argue about this subject. That’s how many issues are decided over the years: by debate, consideration of the pros and cons, and a conservative look at how various laws affect We the People over time. That sort of action may take longer to work, but once it catches, it sticks.
What the court did in 1973 was bypass all that and force legalized abortion upon the states. Which gave rise to not just protest, but pique. The 50 labs of democracy weren’t allowed to experiment.
Instead, the court found a new right and dubbed it the Law Of The Land. Funny, but history doesn’t necessarily abide by judicial rulings. Which is why Dred Scott didn’t put an end to the slavery debate.
A friend once put it to us this way: If Roe is overturned, the debate will disperse back to state capitals. Some more conservative states (like this one) might take a more suspect view of abortion and pass laws more in line with how people around here think. And California will do the opposite. In fact, the more liberal states might pass laws that allow for fewer restrictions on abortion.
Abortion will remain a state issue and state debate. Laws will be adjusted accordingly.
To our friends on the left: This isn’t the end of the world. This isn’t even the end of abortion. As much as some conservatives (ahem) wish it would be.