It has become fashionable among opponents of abortion to couch their argument in terms of an assault on judicial legislating; the argument goes that Roe v. Wade is flawed because it rests on the judgement of nine unelected individuals rather than on legislation drafted by the elected representatives (either state or federal, senate or house, depending on who's speaking), and therefore we should overturn Roe v. Wade in favor of some piece of abortion-legalizing legislation to be introduced and hammered out sometime in the future.
This is a classic example of putting the cart before the horse.
We have a working system right now that protects women whose health may be harmed by carrying a pregnancy to term or who have been impregnated by their rapists or through incest; we have a working system where a woman who wants or needs an abortion can get one without fear of infection. If you want to overturn the judicial decision that makes that system work because you think a legislated solution would be less fractious, then your duty is clear: get legislation guaranteeing a working system like what we have now passed BEFORE you go about overturning Roe v. Wade.
Barring that, stop pretending that your campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade has anything to do with preserving a woman's right to choose.
3.06.2006
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2 comments:
Which brings up the question: if such a legislative solution to get the same deal proves impossible, then what?
I think an effective retort might be that freedom of choice is a basic/fundamental freedom, so that it is above the will of the majority to give or deny. For example, if the Jim Crow laws had been put up to a vote in the Deep South they'd probably have been maintained, but that wouldn't have made them morally valid and it still would have been the right thing to strike them down. Not a perfect example, but the general idea's there.
I am sympathetic to the counter-argument that without a clear legislative decision, though, there'll never be a clear "there was a free vote of our elected representatives, you won, we lost" moment which allows the nation to move on, or a "we tried your other way, it didn't work" failed attempt as happened with Prohibition.
P.S. In my 2nd paragraph I meant a retort to the anti-abortion position, not to what you wrote. On re-reading, I saw it wasn't clear.
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