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If Roe Goes

Jill

Linda Hirshman has a great piece up in the Washington Post about the realities of Roe going. One thing she points out is that the face of the United States post-Roe would be considerably different than pre-Roe.

But it’s not 1972. The climate then was one of growing sympathy for women seeking abortion, triggered in part by stories of those who sought one after realizing that their children would be deformed by the anti-morning-sickness drug thalidomide. Social liberalism was rising; religions weren’t much engaged in politics. Today, the politics of abortion have changed. In addition to old laws that would spring back up should Roe be reversed, the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute lists four states — Louisiana, Missisippi, North and South Dakota — as having trigger laws explicitly aimed at making abortion criminal upon Roe’ s demise, and seven others that have committed to acting to the extent that the court may allow.

The trigger laws are much harsher than the pre- Roe laws; Louisiana’s, for instance, would allow abortion only in case of a threat to the mother’s life or to a life-sustaining organ. In 1972, roughly 40 percent of the women who got abortions in the United States did so outside their state of residence. There are now more than a million abortions a year. Can you imagine how many women will travel elsewhere if their home states prohibit abortion unless the mother’s life is at risk?

The difference today is that some states with criminal abortion laws will almost certainly also forbid their residents to cross state lines to obtain an abortion. Missouri already allows civil litigation against anyone who helps a minor cross state lines to get an abortion without parental consent. Congress was well along to passing a law making it criminal to take a minor from a state requiring parental consent when the Democrats won in 2006 and stopped it.

The anti-choice strategy has been to chip away at abortion rights, while simultaneously creating a back-up legal structure that will kick in the second Roe is overturned. The anti-choice goal isn’t just to declare Roe invalid; it’s to establish fetal personhood. And if that’s the case, state laws allowing for abortion rights won’t matter.

Read the whole article. This election matters for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the future of the Supreme Court and reproductive rights.

23 thoughts on If Roe Goes

  1. This is all an excellent analysis….but also, what this omits is miscarriages and the investigations of women for tehir “dead wee persons”

    And trust me, if RvW goes, there will be plenty of “pro-lifers” who won’t be able to have the option to abort safely (for themselves or tehir daughters)…and the n the’ll see the ultimate failure of their policies. for it will cost lives.

    Good men and women must come together to make sure this never happens…

  2. The analysis of the interstate commerce clause as applied to adults is, now 14 years beyond my J.D. sheepskin, a little beyond my scholarship. Most such laws would have to be enacted at the federal, not state, level and Congress could easily override almost any state law to the contrary regarding interstate medical travel. Nonetheless, the prospect is frightening.

  3. All one has to do is read “Pro-Life Nation” from the NYT about two years ago to see how really bad it could get.

    REading things like this makes me hate my country because I realize how much my country, as a woman, hates me.

  4. I *do* think that the high-tide of anti-abortion fervor has passed, though. Now, if Roe were to be overturned, then yes, plenty of states will enact their legislation, and millions of women will suffer, either directly or tangentally. However, our chances of protecting Roe is good and the worst threats have passed. I think the primary aim of feminists with a focus on abortion should be on prescription drugs. Roe is immaterial (at least changing from the present cynical circumstances) if all a woman has to do is take a pill as an abortificant. RU486, the morning after pill, those small, portable items can secure a woman’s right to choose quite a bit more absolutely than law. All that has to happen is for the FDA to approve these items for OTC use.

    We’re on the defensive on most civil rights areas, but this is one area in where a devestating counter does exist.

  5. An abortaficient isn’t necessarily going to solve the problem. Plan B is only good if you take it right after sex- not much use if you don’t realize you’re pregnant til you’ve missed a couple periods. And IIRC, chemical abortion- any pill that’s abortaficient- is either not safe enough for widespread use, or will be made illegal along with Roe.

    I find this to be a huge threat.

  6. I have been wondering what a post-Roe world would look like, but I am not sure what today’s Roe world looks like for my state, Indiana. I know everyplace has hoops to jump through (abortion on demand is a lie), but how many pro lifers know how difficult it is to obtain an abortion now as it is? I know there are states with one provider, just imagine the hardships of women now… not to mention post-Roe.

    I really need to go google and learn more…

  7. I honestly don’t think Roe will be overturned, but if it ever is, I hope enough people out there are like me, and will drop their school, jobs, and lives to take up arms.

  8. “The anti-choice goal isn’t just to declare Roe invalid; it’s to establish fetal personhood. ”

    It’s not even a hidden or fringe agenda. It’s right there in the GOP policy platform. Pag 52.

    “Faithful to the first guarantee of the Declaration of Independence, we assert the inherent dignity and sanctity of all human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”

    Of course, this is nonsensical without actual Constitutional amendment, as the amendment opens “All persons born or naturalized in the United States …”

    The logical conclusion would also mean citizenship for the fetuses of undocumented immigrants so long as they were conceived within the borders, and proportional representation for fetuses.

  9. the idea that someone would force an exam on me (I don’t even do them willingly w/ my own provider) makes me scream. sorta shows how empty the “it’s about babies” rhetoric is when they injure and shame women after the “baby” would be already gone. How does that save babies exactly? Oh yeah, it’s not really about babies at all.

    Marked Hoosier I’m in a one-provider state and i’ve recently been escorting women through protesters to that one place. You’re damn right “abortion on demand” is a lie. But so much of what forced birthers say is lies.

  10. Marked Hoosier,

    What part of Indiana are you in? I know of two abortion providers in Northwest Indiana, We also have a crisis pregnancy center called The Women’s center with multiple locations. Also, in Indiana, it is legal for a pharmacist to refuse to fill your prescription if it is against their religious belief.

  11. shah8: it’s a fallacy that Roe is immaterial. The religious right has now re-defined hormonal contraception as abortion and is quite emboldened by their ability to do so even in the main stream since the majority tend not to pay too much attention until it’s too late to change course. For the past 20 years, I’ve been battling my older brother who keeps saying the right is over-reaching and always get slapped back in the end. This despite the fact that I’ve kept pointing out that they come back even more outrageous an illogical and, somehow, more successful in their quest for a bizarre “Christian” themed pseudo-Republic. He’s finally seeing my point but there are many others in the general population who don’t see the real threat even with McCain-Palin ticket as they take the “oh, they won’t go that far” approach.

    It’s a short distance and a 72-year old’s heartbeat away from what we have now to the forensic vagina inspectors of El Salvador to John Cosgrove of VA to Ceacescus’ Romania

  12. What bothers me (well, one of the things that bothers me) is this: wouldn’t laws preventing pregnant women from crossing state lines to have an abortion be really really unconstitutional?

    Because:
    1. State A can’t prosecute for action (which is a crime in State A) taking place in State B (where it is not a crime). Right?
          (The article gives the example of horse-stealing, but surely horse-stealing was also illegal in DC?)
    2. So the only way to stop the action from happening is to prevent people from going to State B to do it.
    3. Since it would be difficult to prove that a pregnant woman was leaving the state in order to get an abortion, instead of, say, visiting relatives, the law would have to restrict the movement of pregnant women, as a class, in order to have any effect.
    4. And that’s unconstitutional!

    Does this make sense?/is it correct?

  13. Rebecca is right- a ban on out of state abortions would violate the Interstate commerce clause. The exact clause used to stop segregation on buses and trains in the south.

  14. Rebecca is right- a ban on out of state abortions would violate the Interstate commerce clause. The exact clause used to stop segregation on buses and trains in the south.

    If states passed the laws banning out-of-state abortions, probably. But whether the federal government would be able to pass such a law — considering that they already tried, except it was only applied to minors — is a whole other question.

  15. I’m pretty sure that there are also Supreme Court cases (unrelated to abortion) that protect freedom of travel, though. The exact names slip my mind. (I do think CIANA is unconstitutional.)

  16. Yeah, there definitely are, and I also think CIANA is unconstitutional. But it’s funny how quickly Supreme Court justices will change their mind on constitutional theory when confronted with a case that challenges their political ideology — see, for example, Raich. That’s part of what I worry about.

  17. Mm, good point. (Watch “states’-rights” judges change tack when it’s the state’s right to allow abortion instead of to ban it.)

  18. * and anti-“judicial-activism” judges, when they have the opportunity to legislate an abortion ban from the bench.

  19. Obama in the White House, fifty-six plus senate seats (according to 538), I’m not that worried. Plus, I don’t really buy that Repubs care that much about it. Some do–those doctors didn’t shoot themselves. But not enough do to really make things bad, I don’t think. Between a fifth and a quarter of all pregnancies in this country are electively terminated. We’re the majority, basically. There’s wiggle room on stuff like “partial-birth,” but the abortion fight is more or less over, until ectogenesis works. And, really, until it works cheaply. I’m curious about how much tax money wingnuts would be willing to spend on gestating unwanted fetuses (not curious enough to hope I ever find out), but I bet it’s not very much.

    Could be I’m naive, but I’m not that worried about it. Doesn’t get me off the hook for working to make things even better, but the dystopic stuff doesn’t really do it for me.

  20. “Obama in the White House, fifty-six plus senate seats (according to 538), I’m not that worried.”

    I am praying that this happens but I am not about to count those chickens until they hatch.

  21. Ms. Fakename, you’d be surprised. Conservatives go on and on (and on) about Roe. (I always ask them if they’ll shut up about popular sovereigntyand activist judges when the people legalize abortion, and have not yet gotten a response.)

    Though Roe hasn’t been doing much to stop states from imposing waiting periods, parental consent laws, and “informed consent” spiels.

  22. Is there anyone that hates the fetus more than you, Jill? I mean seriously, you want them contaminated with drugs, tobacco, and given less rights than a worm. Maybe this is why feminists are unbreeding themselves out of existence.

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