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Tuesday, August 10th, 2021

If Roe v. Wade Is Overturned, the Future Will Be Worse Than the Past

Author:     Katha Pollitt
Source:     The Nation
Publication Date:     AUGUST 23/30, 2021, ISSUE
 Link: If Roe v. Wade Is Overturned, the Future Will Be Worse Than the Past
Stephan:   I am old enough to remember America when abortions were illegal, and knew two women who almost died from kitchen abortions. One had been raped by her boss, the other was in college and had gotten drunk at a fraternity party and had sex, semi-consensually, with a boy she had just met. The Republican male-dominant christofascists in state legislatures and Congress have been trying to overturn Roe vs Wade for decades and think the Supreme Court, thanks to Trump's appointments, will now rule in their favor overturning a woman's ability to control her own body. Here is a good appraisal as to what that would mean.
The Jackson Women’s Health Organization clinic in Jackson, Mississippi. The state’s only abortion clinic, it will be the subject of a Supreme Court case next term. Credit: AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis

If they are shrewd, the six antichoice justices on the Supreme Court will resist the urge to overturn Roe v. Wade when they decide next term on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. At issue is a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of gestation in explicit defiance of Roe, which protects abortion rights until around 24 weeks. Why hand the Democrats an issue that has worked well for them in purple states like Virginia? An attempt in 2012 to force women seeking abortions to have transvaginal ultrasounds backfired against Republicans so powerfully the state is now entirely under Democratic control.

Despite Roe, states where antichoicers are strong have succeeded in drastically limiting abortion access by passing measures that force clinics to close—six have only one—and heap up obstacles that keep women from accessing abortions in time. As it has done with voting rights, the court can effectively gut Roe while leaving it formally in place. In fact, it […]

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