The Fall of Roe: Making Both Parties Healthier?

The Roberts Court, April 23, 2021
Seated from left to right: Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr. and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor
Standing from left to right: Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett.
Photograph by Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

It’s time for our country to take a collective deep breath. Regardless of “the language and scope of the Supreme Court ruling this summer,” writes Casey Chalk in SpectatorWorld, abortion in the United States is not going away.

Even if abortion happens to be dramatically restricted in your state, you will likely be able to drive to a neighboring state, or perhaps a few states over, to procure one. And there will almost certainly be well-funded organizations and activist groups, like the “Aunties,” who will provide all manner of financial and advisory aid to help people who desire an abortion. The annual budget of Planned Parenthood alone is in the hundreds of millions, if not over $1 billion.

If liberals have any sense — and compassion — they will acknowledge that abortion is a subject worthy of democratic deliberation. Given that a significant number of states (and their voters) feel strongly enough about it, why should the states not be allowed to serve as laboratories of democracy? It’s an idea proposed not only by a Supreme Court justice, but the very Tenth Amendment to our Constitution.

In the WSJ, Peggy Noonan argues how the fall of Roe could make each of our major parties healthier. It would be a historic gift to both groups: “a chance to become their better selves.”

Republicans, writes Ms. Noonan, now have an opportunity to “change [their] party’s reputation” by coming forward as “human beings who care about women and want to give families the help they need.”

Democrats, meanwhile, will have been given a gift with the removal of the abortion issue from the national conversation, as they could become “a normal party” again, if Roe is overturned, asserts Ms. Noonan.

And if Roe is indeed overturned, God bless our country that can make such a terrible, coldhearted mistake and yet, half a century later, redress it, right it, turn it around. Only a thinking nation could do that. Only a feeling nation could do that. We’re not dead yet, there are still big things going on here.”