Safe, legal and rare ...

The two extreme sides on the abortion debate are going way too far.

The majority of Americans support Roe v. Wade.  They think abortion should be legal, but with some restrictions. That’s been the view for decades now.

However, the debate over abortion – and a woman’s right to an abortion – rages on.  The rhetoric has gotten even more extreme in recent years since the 1973 Supreme Court decision. 

It’s always been about politics. And still is.  And will remain so. 

You can debate if the legal basis for Roe v. Wade was sound yet still agree with the outcome.     

Personally, I think it was sloppy jurisprudence by activist Justices based on an invented “right to privacy” that appears nowhere in the Constitution.  See if you can find it there.  You can’t. 

That’s because it doesn’t exist in the Constitution.  They made it up. 

Nor is it a law. The Supreme Court can overturn lower court rulings, but it can’t create law.  To be a law it would have to be passed by Congress and signed by the President.

To my knowledge there is no such Federal law protecting or prohibiting the right to an abortion. There’s just an opinion by the Supreme Court in 1973, on somewhat shaky grounds. No Congress, including this one, has ever wanted to resolve the issue.  To solve it would take away a powerful fundraising tool – and neither party wants that.   

Many Americans are opposed to unrestricted abortion on demand, but still believe it should be available with reasonable restrictions. Which was the basic outcome of the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision. In short, they are in the “safe, legal and rare” camp, which is where most Americans are, especially most American women. They largely support keeping Roe v. Wade in force. 

They are pro-life in the abstract; yet pragmatically pro-choice within reason. They don’t believe in promoting abortion, or celebrating it, but would oppose banning all abortions.

Accidents happen. Birth control can fail.  Women get pregnant when they didn’t want to, or simply aren’t ready to have a child for whatever reason.  Requiring them to carry a child to term as a result isn’t always the best solution, either for the mother-to-be or the unborn child.  

A much smaller, but very vocal and ardent, group of extreme abortion opponents want all abortion at any stage to be illegal, with no exceptions.  They see Roe v. Wade as a license to murder the unborn, even at the point of conception. They want Roe v. Wade overturned by any means.   

There are also extreme supporters of unrestricted abortion on demand. 

The extreme abortion on demand proponents want no restrictions on abortion at all.  They believe a woman of any age has the right to terminate a pregnancy for whatever reason, at any time. The most extreme of these believe that includes immediately after the delivery of a live baby. 

Both extremes have become more radical over the years. 

In some states, the extreme abortion opponents have managed to get laws signed to make performing any abortion – at any time, and under any circumstances – against the law and in some cases punishable by imprisonment up to 99 years.

In other states, extreme abortion on demand proponents have succeeded in getting laws passed that eliminate any restrictions on abortion. Any. One state even now allows the termination of a baby immediately after a live birth, if the mother wishes.   

Abortion opponents are screaming this permits legal infanticide.  Abortion on demand proponents accuse the abortion opponents of taking away a woman’s right to choose and control her own body, while ushering in a real-world version of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Honestly, both extremes are crazy.  They are pushing these ridiculous state laws for no other reason than to polarize the country politically even further.  One side claims they’re hoping for a showdown in the Supreme Court; the other frankly doesn’t care if the Court hears the cases or not – they’re already making political hay out of the overreaction by the anti-abortion fanatics.  

Abortion opponents think with a conservative majority on the Court, it’s their best shot in years to overturn Roe v. Wade and send decisions about abortion back to the states.

That’s wishful thinking at best; there’s virtually no chance the Court will ignore more than 45 years of precedent altogether.  It may have a shaky Constitutional foundation but throwing it out would set off a firestorm.  Plus, the Court – with either a conservative or liberal majority – usually favors maintaining or extending rights, rather than curtailing them.  The most likely outcome is that it gets upheld by a 6-3 or 5-4 vote, with a couple of strong dissents.  Anti-abortion extremists lose. 

Abortion on demand proponents – pushed by progressives in the Democrat Party – don’t really care whatever the Court decides.  They’re already using the issue to bash Republicans, and especially Trump, ahead of the 2020 election. They’ve framed it as a women’s rights issue. And a powerful tool to drive angry women voters to the polls for Democrats. 

They win either way. If the Court somehow overturns Roe v. Wade – a real long shot – that still helps Democrats two ways: it bolsters their argument that the makeup of the Court needs to be changed and the next Justice must be a liberal and probably a liberal woman; next, that conservatives (Republicans) don’t care about women at all.

My bet is if these most extreme laws get to the Court, the Court knocks down all of them using Roe v. Wade as precedent, without additional comment.

And we’ll all be back to square one. Which is what everyone wants anyway. 

Including both the Republican and Democrat parties. Then both sides can continue to use the abortion issue for fundraising.  That’s why they’ll never resolve it legislatively in Congress.       

The reality is, virtually nobody is pro-abortion. But outlawing all abortion immediately on conception with no exceptions, even when the life of the mother is at risk, is unrealistic.  

Roe v. Wade may be imperfect at best, but it’s worked for more than 45 years.