It appears that Roe v Wade will be overturned sometime before the 2022 midterms and over half of the states will have laws on the books upholding extreme bans. Pro-life should mean more than life at birth. It should also mean life after birth. Will it? There are immediate unanticipated consequences aside from political backlash that take some time to develop in these culturally conservative and GOP-dominated states.. 13 states have trigger laws and no plans for how to enforce them. The economic impact on social and health services and workforce participation appears not to be even part of the political conversation in any of the 22-24 states. Let us face it, aside from enforcement issues, how will those states deal with the increase in births to mothers who do not have the means to drop out of the workforce or even to feed and clothe more children?
In the meantime, the broader question is how will that 40% with such moral certitude deal with all the unwanted pregnancies and the impact on their economies and social services? Polls also show that the Alito draft which has no exceptions for rape, and incest, is not supported by 73% of Americans, per a recent Pew poll. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/06/americas-abortion-quandary/. Conversely, that extreme position banning abortion with no exceptions has only 27%, a very striking minority. If overturning Roe triggers anti-abortion laws on the books in 22 states, many of those states have no exception for incest or rape, and some of them even have no exceptions for the life of the mother. The observation that concern about the pro-life movement ends with children at birth is well deserved because many of those same states, controlled by Republican politicians, are the ones who oppose "welfare queens", child tax credits, funding child care, food stamps, expansion of health care access and affordability, mental health and suicide hotlines, teen pregnancy, and other services needed to deal with families who have too many children they can afford to support and are forced to carry the baby to term. For those who seek back alley abortions and home remedies and the infections and death that result, are emergency rooms, hospitals, and health insurance and Medicaid ready to absorb the cost? Will enough be willing to adopt babies, those given up to that fate? Abortions have always been performed and often lead to death and infection, even if abortion is considered criminal by law or back in the days before Roe v Wade and birth control. . There is no reason to believe that will not continue, even with criminal penalties for mothers and helpers who perform them. The rich have always found funds to take off work or be stay-at-home moms or to travel to Mexico or elsewhere to places that permit them. The poor and the lower middle income never have had that alternative.
To add insult to injury, some of the most extreme "pro-lifers" also ban the morning after pill and fight easy access to contraception from the pill to IUD. If the goal is to stop abortions, the best way is access to birth control. Access to free birth control reduces abortion rates – Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (wustl.edu) Abstinence and rhythm have never worked as long as humans have had hormones. In fact, even some of the most extreme anti-abortion states already are ready to implement bani access to the morning after pill. So far the Court had upheld rights to abortion, birth control, marriage equality based upon the concept of "privacy". If the reasoning of the extreme leaked version is based on that concept (not expressed in the Constitution), then, in spite of assurances to the contrary (not in the Consitution either), the same theory will not be applied to either contraception or marriage equality. The firewall does not exist to keep the privacy theory from being applied to destroy these other rights previously upheld by prior members of the Court. It is only based on the assurances of one drafter of the leaked draft whose word is not gold. The other legal theory that could be drawn into the decision would be the equal protection provision of the 14th Amendment. 14th Amendment - Citizenship Rights, Equal Protection, Apportionment, Civil War Debt | The National Constitution
13 'Trigger Law' States Failed to Plan for the End of Roe V. Wade (businessinsider.com)
Roe v. Wade: Poll Shows Risk for Republicans Backing No-Exception Abortion Bans - Bloomberg
The majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal in some cases, poll says – The Hill
On abortion, few Americans take an absolutist view| Pew Research Center What is clear: only 30% of Americans support the approach in the leaked draft, a very extreme version. Nearly 60% percent support abortion being legal in some cases.
The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Next Target: Birth Control – Mother Jones
What a Roe v. Wade Overturn Could Mean For Birth Control (yahoo.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment