<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1656104839565,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000162-07b6-de22-a173-2ffe05de0001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1656104839565,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000162-07b6-de22-a173-2ffe05de0001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_56082225", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1039680"} }); ","_id":"00000181-978a-d66a-a7c3-d7af59990000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedWithin a matter of weeks, roughly half of the 50 states will likely ban or severely restrict abortion. We know this to be true because, for the half-century that Roe v. Wade reigned supreme, every Republican in a safely red state told us so.
Now, the Supreme Court has democratized the abortion question, returning the issue that remained in an effectively 50-50 deadlock for 50 years to the states as the Constitution intended.
The same people who brought us half a decade of apoplectic panic about Russia/Facebook/Republicans directly murdering American democracy are now in, well, an apoplectic panic about democracy. They don’t like that an unelected body has returned this issue back to the voters and their elected representatives. To save face, they argue that the court will, on the same bases, do things that the public is far less likely to accept — to reverse the 60-year-old precedent on contraception and the more recent Obergefell v. Hodges decision on marriage equality.
For starters, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority in the decision to overturn Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey’s protection of abortion until viability, literally says so.
“What sharply distinguishes the abortion right from the rights recognized in the cases on which Roe and Casey rely is something that both those decisions acknowledged: Abortion destroys what those decisions call ‘potential life’ and what the law at issue in this case regards as the life of an ‘unborn human being,'” Alito writes.
He was referring to other decisions that expanded individual rights related to privacy, Loving v. Texas and Griswold v. Connecticut, which Roe and Casey cited as precedent. “None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved the critical moral question posed by abortion. They are therefore inapposite. They do not support the right to obtain an abortion, and by the same token, our conclusion that the Constitution does not confer such a right does not undermine them in any way.”
Although Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the court ought to revisit all of the substantive due process precedents, including Griswold and Obergefell (which protected the rights to legal contraception and gay marriage, respectively), not one other justice joined, and the majority opinion explicates that “nothing in this opinion” — one that, again, Alito specifically says is different because it involves the termination of a human life — “should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
Furthermore, unlike the abortion issue, there is a political consensus behind preserving both same-sex marriage and contraception in state legislatures. Republicans are not teeing up challenges to either Obergefell or Griswold. In contrast, the divide between those identifying as nominally pro-choice versus pro-life has remained stagnant for five decades:
<bsp-quote data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1656103097973,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000166-5490-d4a8-a166-f5bd84d20001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1656103097973,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000166-5490-d4a8-a166-f5bd84d20001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"quote":"Although 3 in 5 people do not support the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, fewer than one-third of all people support unconditionally legal abortions. The United States is a legal outlier on abortion bans, as even most of Europe bans the second (and in cases, third) trimester abortion legality still upheld by our courts. But fewer than 3 in 10 people believe second-trimester abortion ought to remain illegal, and barely 1 in 10 believe so for third-trimester abortions.
Even in cases of first-trimester abortions, U.S. morality doesn’t view all cases with equal merit. Four in 5 people support legal abortions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest or those threatening a woman’s life. But a slim majority of the country believes even a first-trimester abortion ought to be illegal if the reason is simply that the mother "does not want the child for any reason." The nation is also more broadly supportive of neurodiversity than the Twitter discourse would have you suspect. Half the nation supports criminalizing abortions to terminate a baby with Down syndrome, and 2 in 5 support doing so for abortions motivated by a mentally disabled fetus.","_id":"00000181-976f-df44-ad8b-d76fa1130000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b92f10002"}”>Although 3 in 5 people do not support the Supreme Court overturning <i>Roe v. Wade</i>, fewer than one-third of all people support unconditionally legal abortions. The United States is a legal outlier on abortion bans, as even most of Europe bans the second (and in cases, third) trimester abortion legality still upheld by our courts. But fewer than 3 in 10 people believe second-trimester abortion ought to remain illegal, and barely 1 in 10 believe so for third-trimester abortions.
Even in cases of first-trimester abortions, U.S. morality doesn’t view all cases with equal merit. Four in 5 people support legal abortions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest or those threatening a woman’s life. But a slim majority of the country believes even a first-trimester abortion ought to be illegal if the reason is simply that the mother “does not want the child for any reason.” The nation is also more broadly supportive of neurodiversity than the Twitter discourse would have you suspect. Half the nation supports criminalizing abortions to terminate a baby with Down syndrome, and 2 in 5 support doing so for abortions motivated by a mentally disabled fetus.Compare that to contraception, which is viewed as morally permissible by 9 in 10 people, including 4 in 5 Catholics and 3 in 4 pro-lifers — and legal gay marriage, which is favored by more than 7 in 10 people, including 40% of weekly churchgoers and the majority of Republicans.
Former President Donald Trump understood this, pivoting the culture war away from consensual adults’ bedroom behavior and instead toward what’s happening in corporate boardrooms and public school classrooms. There’s a reason why Republicans who never hesitated to pledge to end legal abortion are loath to touch marriage equality or contraception. There just isn’t any popular appetite for it.
The case law is admittedly rocky, but in order to overturn Griswold or Obergefell, a case would actually have to be brought to and considered by the Supreme Court. There is no such case on the horizon nor any political appetite by anyone to create one.
In fact, Republicans have openly pledged to deregulate contraception by making it an over-the-counter drug. And if there were such a case, how many justices would agree to take it? If Thomas could miraculously win over his colleagues, would state legislatures show any interest in banning gay marriage or contraception? We all know the answer: absolutely not.
Republicans are going to ban or restrict abortion in Republican areas just as they said always they would, and just as Alito explained, they are going to do so to protect lives, not to tyrannize over the private behavior of consenting adults.
