The above title might strike you as harsh, rude, perhaps even triumphalist. Well, it’s true enough that I welcome the Supreme Court’s action in striking down Roe v. Wade, a ruling both constitutionally and morally grotesque. But that’s an argument for another day.
What I’m concerned with here is the foolishness and self-deception of the pro-abortion side and, by extension, of progressivism in general. For the truth is that they raised the edifice of “choice” on a foundation of sand. The claim today is that a conservative Court majority has stripped women of a constitutional right. But that is not true. No such right ever existed; it can neither be found nor assumed to exist in the Constitution of the United States. The liberal Court majority that handed down Roe v. Wade fifty years ago made it all up. First those justices decided that they wanted to make abortion legal on a national basis, then they cobbled together a phony constitutional argument to justify their ideological preference.
For fifty years progressives assumed that the sanctity of precedent and sheer inertia would keep intact the dubiously justified abortion regime imposed on the nation by Roe. But precedent is not sacrosanct and the past, though it may influence the future, cannot be relied upon to determine it. What Roe did was freeze the debate without settling it, thus ensuring that abortion would continue to be a live political and social issue.
If they thought they could rely on a single Supreme Court decision to keep abortion rights intact, progressives were deceiving themselves. The very shoddiness of the ruling ensured that the possibility of its reversal would always loom, and this had unfortunate, even destructive, consequences. The descent of the judicial confirmation process into partisan fury and vile character assassination may be traced to Roe v. Wade. Neither Clarence Thomas nor Brett Kavanaugh were deemed unacceptable by the Left due to issues of sexual harassment and sexual assault. They were seen, rightly, as potential votes for the reversal of Roe, and the charges leveled against them were merely a pretext. On both sides, the unsettled abortion issue was a major influence on their calculations surrounding judicial nominations, hence the cause of much ill will.
Moreover, there was always a contradiction at the heart of the pro-abortion side’s defense of Roe. When it comes to the First Amendment and the Second Amendment, where civil liberties are expressly set forth, progressives have demonstrated great flexibility of interpretation. In the latter case particularly, they’ve jumped through every conceivable hoop in an effort to prove that the right to keep and bear arms is a second-class right, if not a mirage. But when it comes to abortion rights, which appear nowhere in the Constitution, these are held to be fixed and immutable, with no room for interpretation or nuance. Intellectually this position is indefensible, hence the virulence of pro-choice rhetoric, the propensity to shout down and demonize all opposition to abortion.
Now that Roe v. Wade has been discarded and the abortion issue is back in the hands of the people’s representatives, the pro-choice movement faces a choice of its own. It can either make its case to the people on a state-by-state basis, or it can double down on the extremist rhetoric and even embrace violence. In the short term, probably, we can expect plenty of the former and some at least of the latter. But the cause of abortion on demand, up to and past the moment of birth, is dead in America. Here and there in backward places like California and New York, that sanguinary death cult may survive. But in most of the country there will be greater or lesser curbs on abortion. And in the course of time, an abortion regime will emerge that broadly reflects the preferences of the American people—who though they do not support an absolute ban, do favor such restrictions as a prohibition on third-trimester abortions.
But if I read the situation correctly, progressives will fight tooth and nail to prevent democratic accountability from determining the future of abortion and America. For a political faction that expels so much hot air over the sanctity of “our democracy,” that is stupid indeed.
The problem, as I see it, is that Democrats want "Abortions for everybody!" and Republicans want "No abortions for anybody!". Most Americans seem to want something in the middle, like Europe has--abortion on demand for 15 weeks, and after that only for medical reasons. Also, I think a lot of the "virulence" of the discourse is due to the sheer body horror of an unwanted pregnancy. Something unwelcome is growing in you, like a parasite or tumor, and you can't get rid of it. It can permanently damage your body and maybe kill you. I worked for a colorectal surgeon and you don't want to know the grotesque damage childbirth can do to a lady's nethers. Women who want a baby just cross their fingers and hope for the best.