You don’t have to be pro-choice to oppose overturning Roe

Elections have consequences, they say. Late Monday night, Politico broke what could be the most consequential result of Donald Trump’s 2016 election, posting a leaked draft of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s would-be majority opinion that would overturn the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade.

There are so many implications from this, if the court follows through on the leaked ruling, and you don’t have to be prochoice to be very bothered by them.

First and foremost, overturning Roe v. Wade would mean that in many states, terminated pregnancies could immediately become a crime, with no exceptions for rape, incest or the health of the woman. Draconian, anti-woman laws like that have already been passed recently by Republicans in several states, including Texas, where a statute makes anyone involved in the facilitation of an abortion — from a doctor to an Uber driver — potential accessories to the crime.

These laws are not popular, even in the states in which they were passed.

It’s important to note that the extremists on the far-right, who believe there should be no abortions, and the extremists on the far-left, who believe there should be no restrictions, don’t represent the majority of this country.

I am pro-life. I hate abortion and wish desperately that women confronting that difficult and awful choice felt they had alternatives to ending the life of an unborn child. But I also believe deeply in democracy. In this country, the Supreme Court, the highest in the land, settles these issues, and we must accept its rulings.

Roe v. Wade is six years older than I am. I have always accepted, like most Americans,

that abortion should be legal — and, like most Americans, that it should come with some restrictions. Overturning the law meant overturning the will of the people, something Republicans have become increasingly comfortable doing.

But I have to wonder if they’d be so comfortable if liberal justices overturned conservative landmark opinions, like the gun rights case D.C. vs. Heller, or the money-in-politics case, Citizens United vs. FEC, or the religion case, Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby. If President Joe Biden or another Democratic president gets the opportunity to appoint more liberal

judges, these might not be hypotheticals.

If the next group of justices can overturn settled law that is widely popular and accepted as the law of the land, what is the point of the Supreme Court? Unlike the other two branches, the judicial branch is supposed to act apart from political whims. If this court overturns Roe, Obergefell vs. Hodges, the gay marriage

ruling, or myriad other landmark cases, who will have faith that justice in America is blind?

Then there are the political implications. The good news for Democrats is that this unpopular move by the court would give them a fighting chance in what was poised to be a bloodbath in November. I can’t think of a more galvanizing issue.

Finally, there’s the leak itself.

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin called it shattering, and wondered “how or if the institution is going to recover.” Conservative commentators Ari Fleischer and Mike Huckabee agreed it was awful, with both calling it, unironically, “an insurrection” against the Supreme Court.

Whatever you think of

the leak, and however you come down on abortion, this news is deeply troubling and has vast implications, not just for women but all American voters. And it’s just another in a long line of chilling consequences from one election in 2016, an election that in so many unforgivable and irreparable ways, shredded the democratic institutions that hold this country up.