FIRST JOHN ROBERTS. Then Samuel Alito. In the view of some people, all that is needed now to overturn Roe v. Wade is the right case.
I am not as sure as I once was that it would be a bad idea.
Not because I want to see abortion outlawed. Criminalize abortion and only rich women will have safe ones.
No. I want abortion to remain legal, and therefore available to poor women and young women and women without the resources to navigate a black market system.
But I might like to see abortion rights re-argued -- in state legislatures instead of the U.S. Supreme Court. And if the high court vacates Roe v. Wade, that is what would happen.
I am not enthusiastic about the prospect of a blue state-red state patchwork of abortion rights. That, too, would put logistical stumbling blocks in front of pregnant women without means.
But I think we need to hash this subject out again, and there is no better grassroots way to do it than in state legislatures. It has been 33 years since abortion was legalized in this country, and much has changed. We know more about the early months of human life -- and we know more about ourselves as women.
Many of us who were young feminists when Roe v. Wade was decided might not have an abortion now, and we might not want anyone we love to have one, either. But we would never make that decision for another woman, and we would never remove the option of a legal -- and therefore safe -- abortion for any woman determined to have one.
We have to get over our fear of a reconsideration of abortion, and what reasonable conditions might be placed on its availability. Because if abortions were not easily available (and, in fact, they are less so), we might have to talk seriously about ways to prevent unintended pregnancies. And we might have to talk seriously about providing affordable and quality child care for mothers who must work or go to school, so that the prospect of a child is not so harrowing.
It is under the right-to-life banner that social and religious conservatives have launched assaults on other areas of a woman's reproductive life: the availability of the "morning after" pill; the prerogative of the pharmacist to refuse to fill birth-control prescriptions; the silencing of teachers on the subject of contraceptives, and the shrinking of funding for family planning for poor women. Child-care funds for the working poor are drying up as well.
Those who oppose abortion have framed the argument for us, and they have carried it forward in audacious ways. A Kansas law now being challenged in court would criminalize consensual sexual activity, which could include heavy petting, between those under the age of 16, even when there is no significant age difference, and require adults to report knowledge of it. Talk about Big Brother.
Three states, Arkansas, Georgia and Minnesota, have passed laws requiring doctors to tell women seeking abortions that the fetus might feel pain during the procedure and similar bills have been introduced in Utah, Indiana, Arizona, Iowa, Missouri and Oklahoma, USA Today reports, despite the fact that a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association said there was no evidence of when a fetus first feels pain.
Meanwhile, those who support a woman's right to choose have been taking lazy solace in the sweeping nature of a Supreme Court decision that is three decades old. The other side is ready for a possible sea change in the thinking of the court, and we are not.
It is up to those of us who support a woman's right to choose to rewrite this argument and carry it to the other camp. You think abortion is reprehensible? Fine. We're not so sure how we feel about it, either. Why not work together to make it rare?
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susan.reimer@baltsun.com
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