An Appraisal for Overturning Roe v Wade

[Pah]

Complete article

Speculation lingers that a new mix of Supreme Court justices might overturn Roe v. Wade. It's the 1973 case that established a woman's right to sexual privacy and the ability to control her own reproductive decisions. David Garrow, a legal historian at Emory University, spelled out for me why the fever to scuttle or to rescue Roe has more to do with political theater than with political reality.
...
Supreme Court reversal of Roe lies between impossible and not imaginable in the foreseeable future. The first of his reasons:

For most current and potentially confirmable justices, Roe is not so much about abortion as about the institutional stature, reputation and dependability of the Supreme Court itself. The opinion in Casey (the 1992 case disallowing state abortion regulations that impose an "undue burden," defined as a "substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability") made clear that, irrespective of justices' personal opinions on abortion, Roe, like Brown v. Board of Education, is in "a tiny category of decisions" that are so institutionally huge that you cannot go back without fundamentally damaging the court as an institution."

A second reason: Much of what is happening is self-interested political theater, with the three most visible actors engaging in fundamentally deceptive public behavior. The actors:

• Prochoice groups: For 15 years they have claimed that the sky is about to fall. This is motivated by their need to reiterate their relevancy in order to keep up memberships, contributions and organizational continuity. "What we see with some prochoice activists appears to be almost a desire for things to become as bad as they imagine they can be."

• Right-to life groups: They have spent the last decade emphasizing that first and foremost they are against late-term abortion. This has sent a consistent but confusing message for them -- that late-term abortions medically, morally and aesthetically are far worse than early-term abortion. This is deceptive theater, because they believe all abortions are equally evil. They must press on in this course, though, because the lesson of the last 12 years since Casey is that antiabortion groups can win only on the margins -- public funding, minors' access, partial-birth -- not on the core issues. In any case, both the antiabortion and prochoice interest groups are motivated to portray the situation as far worse than it actually is.

• The White House: It almost certainly has no interest in appointing justices who would overturn Roe, "because nothing could do greater long-term harm to the Republican Party."

The administration may pretend it wants to appoint anti-Roe justices, but Karl Rove has to fear, not dream of, any possible reversal of Roe.

Potential high court nominees who are most likely to want to overturn Roe ... probably aren't confirmable by even this more conservative Senate.

• Another reason: Public opinion polls at the time of Bork showed that a heavy majority of Americans believed that the Constitution does protect a right to privacy.

Robert Landauer is an editorial columnist for the Oregonian of Portland, Ore.

 

[desi]

The right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness... is mentioned in the Constitution, the right to privacy is not. Some creative thinking must have went into the decision to make abortion a Constituional right.

 

[Lintu]

Right to privacy is an absolute necessity. Without it, you still have the courts trying to tell people what they can or can't do in the bedroom. Now, you can argue whether abortion is a privacy issue or not, but I don't think it's right to say we don't have a right to privacy. I believe that privacy is encompassed in liberty.

 

[Pah]

The right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness... is mentioned in the Constitution, the right to privacy is not. Some creative thinking must have went into the decision to make abortion a Constituional right.

Only for citizens is the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness promised. The right to privacy is mentioned in constitutional law from the first contraception case through and beyond Roe v Wade. It is mentioned in the case where a right to marry a person of an individuls choosing was recognized. It is found in the Constiution itself in several amendments taken together and in the 9th Amendment.

Bob

 

[Valjean]

If Roe v Wade is repealed there will be a huge, underground abortion movement. Abortifacients will be readily available on the black market and the general public will become more knowledgable about contraception and morning-after possibilities.