If Roe Goes, Our State Will Be Worse Than You Think

[babylonsister]

If Roe is Overturned by McCain-Appointed Justices, Women’s Right to Travel Without Interference Could be Curtailed

If Roe Goes, Our State Will Be Worse Than You Think
By Linda Hirshman
Sunday, September 28, 2008; Page B01


In the 1980s, when abortion was severely limited in then-West Germany, border guards sometimes required German women returning from foreign trips to undergo vaginal examinations to make sure that they hadn't illegally terminated a pregnancy while they were abroad. According to news stories and other accounts, the guards would stop young women and ask them about drugs, then look for evidence of abortion, such as sanitary pads or nightgowns, in their cars, and eventually force them to undergo a medical examination -- as West German law empowered them to do.

Sounds like a nightmare of a police state, doesn't it? Like something that could never happen in this day and age -- and certainly not in the United States? But depending upon the outcome of this presidential election, it could happen here. This is how.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain opposes abortion, believing that life begins at conception. Imagine that he's elected to the White House and, not long after, one of the aging Supreme Court justices dies or resigns. President McCain appoints a suitably conservative replacement, and a complaisant or cowed Senate confirms the nomination. Then, an ambitious district attorney in Alabama, Delaware or any one of more than a dozen other states with old abortion laws still on the books or a new, untested abortion restriction prosecutes a local clinic for performing the procedure. (Legal scholars pretty much agree that laws from before Roe v. Wade can be revived.) The clinic goes to federal court; after appeals, the case goes to the Supreme Court, which votes 5-4 to overturn Roe. And we're back to the '60s .

Well, that wouldn't be so bad, you may think. Some states (or even cities and counties) will offer abortion, and others won't. Women will just have to go to New York or someplace else if they want or need to end a pregnancy. A lot of states had pretty liberal laws in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade. Even Georgia, one of the two states involved in that case, allowed some abortions for the health of the mother.

But it's not 1972. The climate then was one of growing sympathy for women seeking abortion, triggered in part by stories of those who sought one after realizing that their children would be deformed by the anti-morning-sickness drug thalidomide. Social liberalism was rising; religions weren't much engaged in politics. Today, the politics of abortion have changed. In addition to old laws that would spring back up should Roe be reversed, the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute lists four states -- Louisiana, Missisippi, North and South Dakota -- as having trigger laws explicitly aimed at making abortion criminal upon Roe' s demise, and seven others that have committed to acting to the extent that the court may allow.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/26/AR2008092602833.html?hpid=opinionsbox1&sub=AR

[glowing]

1. Yep, you can tell its election season.

The small gaggle of protesters were out the other day in front of a clinic that does abortions... Odd that they aren't there during other times of the year.. I often wonder if they are paid to stand out there.. If I had had more time, I would have pulled in and asked... AND asked, why now?

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Adults who occupany pregnant teenagers will be prosecuted under the Mann Act,

as that will qualify as taking an underage girl across state lines for "immoral purposes".

Then there will be a law that won't allow over-the-majority women to cross state lines to seek an abortion.

[babylonsister]

3. Scary, isn't it. nt