Supremes Wade Into Roe So Life May Begin When?

As the Supremes consider the latest challenge to Roe v Wade, the real Q may be whether they should uphold BOTH the Right to Choice & Right to Life. The WSJ suggests the way to do this is for the Justices to at least recast Roe so as to let each state decide abortion rights “as they should have in the first place.”

As the editors emphasized, medical science since Roe v Wade was decided 50 years ago has cast serious doubts on the then-majority’s “invented” pretense that "choice" appears somewhere in the Constitution & “life” begins on some calendared date. Nor is recasting if not overturning a bad decision unprecedented. After all, if stare decisis was so sacred, we would never have a Brown v Board of Education (overturning Plessy v Ferguson “Separate but Equal”) & the worst decision ever in Dred Scott (slaves are property, not human), would still be on the books (well, not quite, as a Civil War, 500K lives, & Constitutional Amendments took care of it.)

Yet, the main point of the WSJ’s editorial board in their “An Abortion Crossroads” and a call for a “clean break” with Roe seems to be mostly a plea that the High Court finally give America (and itself) a sensible if imperfect out of the “pitched political battle” that has played out before the Justices for half a century. Not that a new precedent relying on each state to set the abortion ground rules as clearly called for in the Constitution would be an easy road to follow as neither side will be happy … “Some states may ban it. But others will allow abortion on demand right up to the last day of pregnancy. Debate and elections will sort this out.” Well, maybe the political fights will continue only within each state, but there’s something to be said for honesty and Constitutional integrity in the Rule of Law?

Davd Soul