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What Roe Should Have Said

Professor Lemieux is working on a series of posts discussing Jack Balkin’s book, What Roe Should Have Said. This is Scott’s area of expertise, so he really knows his stuff.

Part I, in which he discusses Canada’s landmark abortion case, R v. Morgentaler, in which, Scott argues, the Supreme Court of Canada did a better job using American precedent than Justice Blackmun did in Roe.

Part II, in which he argues that a woman’s right to make reproductive decisions does not change during the course of her pregnancy (or in regard to whether she is pregnant or not); what changes is the state’s interest in those decisions.

Go. Read.


7 thoughts on What Roe Should Have Said

  1. Pingback: The Debate Link
  2. Anything can always be rewritten to be better. There are certainly arguments that could have been made which were even better with any important decision, and Roe is no exception, but it was destined to become a controversial decision no matter how well founded the legal interpretation was.

  3. Beet, that’s actually Scott’s argument, too. In this circumstance, it’s really just an intellectual thing. But it would be nice if the reasoning of Roe was more airtight so that the chipping away of abortion rights wasn’t possible.

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