Post-Roe America

[wyldwolf]

From NewDonkey.com:

Ramesh Ponnuru and Cass Sunstein have conducted an interesting colloquoy over at The New Republic site about the political implications of a hypothetical overturning of Roe v. Wade in the near future.

National Review's Ponnuru took on the increasingly popular view that returning abortion policy to the legislative branches of the federal and state governments will be a boon to pro-choice progressives and a blow to the GOP. His main argument was that in a post-Roe world, pro-lifers may well be smart enough (and, if Roe is only partially overturned, may be forced) to focus on popular abortion restrictions rather than the kind of frontal assault on abortion rights that could produce a pro-choice backlash. Sunstein responded that losing Roe would give the pro-choice movement the kind of energy and determination that Roe itself has supplied for abortion opponents over the last thirty-three years.

Analysis follows...

http://newdonkey.blogspot.com/

[depakid]

1. Wishful thinking

I've watched for 25 years while one right after another has been stripped away- from consumer protections to job offshoring and I have YET to see the sorts of backlash effects that many of people touting these "theories" predict.

What I do see sometimes though is the embodiment of a the sort of sell out defeatest attitude that's given us the likes of Scalia, Thomas and now Roberts and Alito.

[TheWraith]

2. Will never happen.

The Repub decision makers, the people who actually influence policy, don't want to actually do anything about abortion. It's too good of a money-maker for them. It lets them pull in the dollars and the votes from the fundies. They'd never risk giving that up, no matter what they say publicly.

[Warpy]

3. Wrong. They will go for total bans in the slave states

and then they'll concentrate all their resources on the remaining states. You can bet they won't rest until there is a nationwide ban, and if they have to do it one state at a time, they will. They are zealots and they will never give up.

Given the cavalier way so many leftist men are willing to waive the right of over half the population to ownership and control of their own bodies, the overturn of Roe is a disaster for all of us.

Remember, a lot of young women will die until a Federal standard is reinstituted.

Antiabortion laws kill women. That is the bottom line.

[CTyankee]

4. You are so right!

And I, too, have been amazed that right here on DU there are socalled progressive males who seem so cavalier about a woman's right to choose. Can't figure it out. Must be that they are just too young to have experienced an unplanned pregnancy with a girlfriend or wife before Roe. Older men such as my husband who had been through that are very prochoice.

Yes, these zealots are crazy and I don't think you can ascribe rational thought to them when it comes to this issue.

[sutz12]

5. What we really need

Is a Constitutional amendment prohibiting Congress or the States from passing laws barring medical procedures.

We need sound science and medicine, not fundie dogma, making decisions for our doctors and citizens.

[adwon]

6. True enough

Overturning Roe and Casey would be unambiguous. It wouldn't be like the decline of unions or offshoring because its ideological basis couldn't be hidden by jargon and meaningless analysis. It would be a clear rallying point because abortion, legally at least, is fairly simple: you either can or you can't.

Note: my analysis is pretty simplistic, in a legal sense. Even politically it's simplistic, but a bit easier for most to bother to grasp.