The Supreme Court vs. Democracy


How Roe vs. Wade ripped out voter choice
The Editorial Board at the Wall Street Journal asks what would have happened without Roe vs. Wade.

Attitudes toward abortion were shifting and Americans were engaged in serious public debate, amending state laws to fit new community norms. Sure, New York's law was more liberal than Texas', but that's the way our federalist system of government is supposed to work. And a Texan who wanted an abortion could--with the help of charity if she needed it--go across state lines to obtain one.

Enter the Supreme Court. In his Roe opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun purported to find in the "penumbras" and "emanations" of the Constitution the right to abortion. His ukase struck down 50 state laws, but, more destructively, he also stopped democracy cold. Without Roe, we likely would have had a decade or so of political battles in 50 state legislatures. Our guess is that we would have ended up with a rough consensus close to where every poll shows the American public stands on abortion: legal in the first trimester, with restrictions later in pregnancy and provisions for parental and spousal notification.

One of Roe's many paradoxes is that it instantly gave the U.S. one of the most permissive abortion laws in the Western world. Many European countries require counseling and/or waiting periods and most--including Germany, France and Sweden--forbid it after the first trimester or early into the second. Britain and Japan allow it only when the physical or mental health of the woman is at stake, and in Japan the husband's permission is required. By contrast, U.S. law falls into the same no-questions-asked category as China and the former countries of the Soviet Union.

Another paradox has developed with strides in neonatal technology: Our society now spends millions of dollars to save premature babies born at 25 weeks but permits abortion in the final week of gestation so long as the mother can find a doctor willing to say she will suffer psychological trauma if she gives birth. Such moral disparities will only become more acute as modern medicine lowers the age at which a fetus becomes viable outside the womb.

But the biggest paradox has been political, in that Roe has been a disaster for the Democratic Party that has made its defense a core principle. It took a few years as the pro-life movement organized, but by the late 1970s evangelicals and traditional Catholics--often middle- and lower-middle-class folks who voted Democratic (or didn't vote at all)--began to move to the GOP.

Despite abortion being the most divisive issue in modern America, it is one of the few subjects I do not have a strong opinion about. I do think there are times when abortion is the only practical choice, but I do think it is abused far too often.

I agree that it is been a disaster for the Democrat Party. Like it or not, they are fixated on this one issue and their politics demand that every judicial nominee be evaluated accordingly.

I do not agree with public money supporting abortions at all, but then there is a great deal I do not think public money should be used for.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Sat - November 5, 2005 at 04:57 AM  Tag


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