<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1656103729550,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"0000017a-8cb2-d416-ad7a-beb7278f0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1656103729550,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"0000017a-8cb2-d416-ad7a-beb7278f0000","_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":"00000181-9779-d66a-a7c3-d77d74c40000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedAt long last, and as long expected, the Supreme Court has overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. By overturning a decision that was wrong from the beginning — that was, as Justice Samuel Alito put it, “on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided” — the court has ended the pretended constitutional right to abortion asserted almost 50 years ago.
The Roe era will go down in history as a period during which liberal intellectuals attempted to force radical principles on the population by arrogantly thwarting the democratic process on the most divisive moral and cultural issues of the day. It marks an important turning point in the battle over abolishing abortion.
No, this decision does not end abortion — indeed, it marks only the beginning of a much larger political battle over abolition. But it marks an important milestone because, finally, the issue will be settled in the manner in which democracies should settle political issues.
As Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted in his concurrence, “this Court will no longer decide the fundamental question of whether abortion must be allowed throughout the United States through 6 weeks, or 12 weeks, or 15 weeks, or 24 weeks, or some other line. The Court will no longer decide how to evaluate the interests of the pregnant woman and the interests in protecting fetal life throughout pregnancy. Instead, those difficult moral and policy questions will be decided, as the Constitution dictates, by the people and their elected representatives through the constitutional processes of democratic self-government.”
As much lip service as leftists pay nowadays to “our democracy” when they think the idea will benefit them, they do not actually believe in the principles of self-governance and majority rule. Otherwise, they would support this decision. In many states, majorities have already decided to ban abortion altogether. In many, majorities will keep abortion policy just as it is. And in still others, a great political fight is about to begin. In all cases, a democratic process will decide the outcome.
As the Left melts down over this decision, the public is being treated to every version of the slippery slope fallacy. Abortion absolutists, shaken by the lack of concern over the leaked draft of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, have argued that same-sex marriage and birth control will be taken away next. Although the basis for the former is somewhat flimsy, Roe did at least rest upon the earlier precedent of Griswold v. Connecticut and the fundamental idea that there exists some kind of “right to privacy,” reserved to the people under the Ninth Amendment, even if not explicitly stated in the Constitution.
But there are two problems with their argument. First, although Justice Potter Stewart’s dissent in Griswold remains as brilliant a refutation of that decision’s shoddy reasoning as it was in 1965, birth control’s legality is today a matter of political consensus beyond any dispute. Both parties support legal birth control.
Second, as Dobbs notes very clearly, abortion is different from all other privacy-related rights — “intimate sexual relations, contraception, and marriage” — simply because, unlike any of those things, abortion ends a human life and thus invokes a compelling state interest. On this basis, Alito draws what he calls “this critical distinction between the abortion right and other rights.”
Finally, the pro-life response to this ruling must extend far beyond the mere passage of laws. Yes, restrictions on abortion have definitely helped reduce the number of abortions in the United States since the courts began letting them stand at the turn of the century. More restrictions ought to be passed, and indeed, large majorities of voters in most states support a much more restrictive legal approach to abortion during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy.
But because abortion is certain to remain legal in many states for the foreseeable future, it is not enough just to ban it where such laws can pass. A truly pro-life response to this decision must include efforts to help mothers everywhere get through unexpected pregnancies. To create a culture of life, some combination of the state and civil society must act in concert to give mothers facing unexpected pregnancies a realistic choice other than placing their babies under the abortionist’s knife. If they can do this, no one but the extremists who think abortion a positive good will miss Roe.
