After President Joe Biden’s tragic spectacle of administrative incompetence, pundits said Afghanistan was going to be the chief issue in the midterm elections. Then the Supreme Court showed up as justices refused to halt a Texas legal maneuver that could stop abortions in the state and later elsewhere despite Roe v. Wade permission. Progressive punishment awaits.
The usually fiery, furious portion of the pro-choice crowd is especially aghast just as many in the pro-life crowd are saying that if Texas can do it, so can every other conservative state out there. Gone, at least for a period, is what looked like a more analytically instructed, more socially cohesive future on the nation-ripping issue. A majority of Americans had been coming to think early abortions acceptable but later abortions unacceptable except in extreme cases, something of a compromise.
The whole, politically blistering issue about how much human life counts got going, of course, in 1973 when the Supreme Court removed abortion from state control, saying abortions would be legal up until the third trimester. At that point, as fetuses became viable, it would take something wrong with the fetus or something like a mother’s fearsome health issue to say, “Go ahead, abort.” The ruling was based on a right to privacy that may be implied in the Constitution but isn’t really there.
Wrong solutions
Challenges to Roe v. Wade have been endless and futile until Texas cleverly said we are not going to have state officials out there breaking federal law; we are instead giving citizens the right to sue when an abortion is performed after the first heartbeat six weeks into pregnancy. A successful plaintiff will be recompensed all legal expenses plus $10,000. The Supreme Court did not detect a constitutional violation; state courts can maybe intervene. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to hop in with a new federal law; Democrats figure on winning midterm elections, and the Supreme Court justices may take another look.
