They Want Roe? I Say: Give 'Em Roe

Now, before we get down to yelling and throwing furniture over who sits on the Supreme Court, I want to say something carefully considered and moderate: I hope the Republicans get what they so vocally want, a Supreme Court that overturns Roe vs. Wade.

I hope it with all my heart. I hope they do it next term, by fiat if there’s no appropriate case on the docket. No right-to-life terrorist wants to see Roe v. Wade tossed out more than I do. Do it today. I’ll sign the petition.

I say this because overturning Roe v. Wade would be the end of the Republican Party as it exists under President Bush.  End Roe and it ends the period of special indulgences for radical social conservatives.

Don’t believe me? Consider this from a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press:

Would you like to see the Supreme Court completely overturn its Roe versus Wade decision, or not?

Yes 30%
No 63%

That’s a huge majority in favor of Roe v. Wade, though there’s not an inkling in this particular data  about why people would chose to stand pat.  My guess is they’re basically satisfied with abortion law as it’s constituted today, but it might be that preserving the status quo deprives political blowhards of an issue. That “no change” vote could be interpreted as “I'm tired of people yelling at eachother on cable television.”

So check this from CNN/USA Today/Gallup:

Do you think abortion should be…

Always legal 24%
Sometimes legal 55%
Always illegal 20%
Unsure 1%

A pretty even split, over all, but also something of an ill wind blowing over the Abortion is Murder crowd. Clearly, Americans don’t see abortion as a moral absolute.  For 20 yearrs, moral absolutism has been the electoral position of conservative Republicans – which is to say, these days, almost all Republicans. They’ve stood boldly and drawn clearly defined lines that 55% of their constituents don't draw.

It’s clear that Americans occupying all that middle ground don’t necessarily think that a personal decision like abortion should be left up to the same people who diagnosed Terri Schiavo while sitting in front of their TV sets. Americans understand better than their politicians that personal freedom is dependent on the respect of the freedoms of others.  Given that abortion is a morally difficult issue, who makes the hard choices? I, for one, have no idea. Fortunately, however, there’s data, courtesy of NBC News and that lefty scandal sheet, The Wall Street Journal:

Which of the following best represents your views about abortion? The choice on abortion should be left up to the woman and her doctor. Abortion should be legal only in cases in which pregnancy results from rape or incest or when the life of the woman is at risk. OR, Abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.

Woman and Doctor 55%
Rape/Incest/Life of the Mother 29%
Illegal in all Circumstances 14%

Apparently, the answer “Senator Bill Frist and Representative Tom DeLay” did not receive a statistically significant number of responses.

These statistics are pretty strong evidence that Roe v. Wade should be left alone, since it pretty clearly represents the will of the people. No reasonable person could disagree with that, right?

Well, yeah, except no, it shouldn’t stand.  As a liberal and as a supporter of a woman’s right to chose, I go back to my opening statement: I hope Roe v. Wade gets oveturned as fast as the Bush Court can overturn it.

If that happens millions of people who have ignored abortion as an issue because it’s protected by The Court will be activated in a way they’ve never been activated before. You want a glimpse of what might happen? Consider the issue of property rights and eminent domain.

No, seriously: Consider them. I know they’re boring.  Certainly not exciting like abortion or Karl Rove.  I know the only people who fixate on property rights and eminent domain are the kind of militia-trained crackpots who live in compounds in Idaho and Montana.  But just for a moment think about what happened a couple of weeks ago when the Supreme Court announced that if power-drunk politicans on fund-raising benders decide to turn your house over to Wal Mart, they can.  According to AP:

Alarmed by the prospect of local governments seizing homes and turning the property over to developers, lawmakers in at least half the states are rushing to blunt last month's U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding the power of eminent domain.
--
"People I've never heard from before came out of the woodwork and were just so agitated," said Illinois state Sen. Susan Garrett, a Democrat. "People feel that it's a threat to their personal property, and that has hit a chord."

Half the states...People I've never heard from before.

One Supreme Court decision and Hey, Presto! The middle class is storming state capitals, scaring the shit out of politicians and demanding the kind of protection that, only a few days before, they had assumed they had from the courts.

Imagine, if you will, the effect it would have on politics if the court tossed Roe. Imagine the millions upon millions of people in that vast, 55% middle who nonetheless believe that abortion decisions belong in the hands of women and their doctors. Imagine them just flat pissed off in the same way that homeowners were pissed off about the previously ho-hum world of eminent domain.

Now picture yourself a Republican politician who rose to power promising never to give an inch on abortion. You’re sitting in your office the day after Roe is overturned, trying to estimate how many sound bites there must be of you shouting “abortion in murder,” thinking about how those bites are going to look in opposition commercials.  The crowds at those anti-abortion events – the tens of thousands of people and their checkbooks – seemed so large at the time. But they’re nothing compared to the 80 million angry people gathering in public squares all over the country to demand that something be done to protect what they believe is a personal decision.

That’s what we in the business call an “oh, shit” moment.

Now, here’s where it gets really good. Think of the intersection of the different Republican subsets on issues that are important to, for example, me: Gay rights, the First Amendment, privacy, the environment. What percentage of those soon-to-be-unemployed abortion absolutists are also no-gay-marriage absolutists? Just about all of them, I'd wager. The two issues are music performed to the specifications of the same audience. If you’ll pardon the butchered metaphor, out go the gay-bashing babies with the anti-abortion bathwater.

How about the crowd that thinks the government needs to regulate the arts? (Perhaps ridiculously, I’m including television and radio as “arts.”) I’m guessing pretty close to a 100% correlation. Privacy issues? Pretty strong overlap there, too. The environment? Yup.

If you think about it, it’s almost too good to be true. The vast majority of anti-aboriton absolutists would be gone, and just by coincidence, in one big flush the whole rad-right social engineering agenda would disappear with it.

There are, of course, pro-choice absolutists, and they'd suffer a few setbacks along the way. Kids in most states would have to get parental permission before getting an abortion; partial birth abortions would face the moral scrutiny they deserve. But all-in-all, the real political carnage would be over on the side hard-welded to the politically indefensible position that abortion is murder.

Not a lot of wiggle room there.

Which is why I say: Bring it on. Let’s change the argument from who sits on the Supreme Court to who sits in the Congress and in state legislatures and, ultimately, in the White House.  Let's change it right now, while we've still got a chance.

NOTE: All polling data in this posting is provided by the unbelievably cool PollingReport.com.

Comments

[Pursuit]

You might like to see my post today.

[TR]

Too bad that pollingreport.com didn't use my 85-year old grandmother's idea as a choice in their response list. She says that when men start having babies, they can weigh in on this issue. :)

[Conrad]

TR:

By that logic, your 85 year old grandmother should be barred from commenting on the issue as well.

[TR]

I don't think she'd mind being excluded. I think she's quite willing to let the child-bearers speak. :) I'll be sure to tell her that next time she pipes up.