Important context in considering what might happen in the event that Roe is overturned.
Important context in considering what might happen in the event that Roe is overturned
M any political prognosticators seem awfully confident that should Roe v. Wade be overturned — and that’s, of course, a big if — the decision will be devastating for Republicans in the next election.
Now, I preface the following by noting that even if 99 percent of voters were rock-ribbed fans of abortion rights, it wouldn’t make the procedure any less immoral or the fight to limit it any less important. And even if 99 percent of Americans supported keeping Roe in place, it wouldn’t change the fact that the Supreme Court concocted a non-existent “right” from the ether on this day in 1973, in one of its greatest judicial overreaches.
It’s certainly worth pointing out, however, that the political dimensions of overturning Roe via Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization are more opaque than we are often led to believe. And while Republicans will be compelled to defend their bans, Democrats hold deeply unpopular positions on the matter.
Nearly every story written about the Supreme Court and the Mississippi abortion restrictions frames the law as a draconian infringement on personal freedom. And to prove it, nearly every one of these news stories either focuses, or pivots quickly, to polls that find Americans oppose overturning Roe. “Poll: As Supreme Court hears Mississippi case, just 24% of Americans want Roe v. Wade overturned,” goes one typical headline.
Fair enough. Courts, however, exist to function free of public opinion. And it is highly likely that large numbers of those individuals polled don’t fully comprehend what the decision entails or what overturning it means. As is often the case with American voters, they embrace a mess of contradictory opinions.
Take an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, which found a majority supporting Roe. Seventy-five percent of those polled are also “either somewhat or very dissatisfied” with abortion law, including 66 percent of those who self-identify as “pro-life” and 62 percent of those who self-identify as “pro-choice.” (Most polls on abortion offer the largely useless binary question: Should abortion be legal or illegal “in most cases.”)
Indeed, though the majority of Americans want to keep abortion legal, they also support restrictions that the Left frames as oppressive. Gallup finds that 60 percent believe abortions in the first trimester should be legal, with support plummeting for later trimesters. Only 28 percent support abortion in the second trimester (after 13 weeks) — the cutoff in Mississippi is 15 weeks, by the way — and support drops to 13 percent for abortions in the third trimester. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that Americans are evenly split when it comes to bans on abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected. Gallup also found that 51 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal under “certain circumstance” or “never,” while 48 percent believe it should be legal in every circumstance.
Or, in other words, the contemporary Democratic Party’s position — unlimited tax-funded abortion on demand up until the moment of crowning, including partial-birth abortion — is less popular than the Mississippi law.
How popular is it to shield abortion clinics from basic safety regulations that every other medical provider must meet? (And supposedly abortion is health care?) Most polls found that a strong majority of Americans disagreed with tax-funded abortions, as well. Yet, that too is the position of the Democratic Party, which recently reversed course on the long-standing Hyde amendment. One of the first things Biden, like most recent Democratic Party presidents, did was to repeal the Mexico City Policy, ensuring that taxpayers also fund the abortion industry abroad.
While there may be initial shock over the end of Roe — a decision that’s been elevated to near-religious exaltation on the left after decades of hyperbolic predictions, which includes promises of an explosion of back-alley abortions, a mythology that goes back to the 1960s, when Walter Cronkite and others were fearmongering with uncorroborated numbers regarding deaths of women — little would actually change. It would simply become a state and policy matter.
Ideally, one would hope that science and reason would prevail in that arena in the long term, but considering the current partisan environment, that is probably wildly optimistic. Yet pro-life advocates already defend their positions on moral and scientific grounds, while the pro-abortion side circumvents debate by claiming that they are empowered by an immutable right in the Constitution that gives them license to get rid of a living thing for the sake of convenience. That outlook isn’t as popular with Americans as the media and Democrats would have you believe.