SCOTUS overturns Roe megathread (pg 53 - confirmed)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Back in the 1970s, Irving Howe made the argument that American Liberals had come to rely a little too much on winning political victories through the courts rather than through democratic means. He was concerned about this on several distinct grounds, but the two that are perhaps relevant here are the democratic legitimacy (or rather the danger of a perceived lack of) those decisions and the fact that those decisions could theoretically be overturned if the political composition of the judiciary altered radically.

In most 'Western' countries, of course, abortion is a political issue of relatively minor salience, largely because the legal framework determining what restrictions are applied to it are the result of social compromise; of the acceptance that it is a difficult issue on which public opinion tends to cut across most of the usual social cleavages. The exact social compromise varies as did the exact process by which it was reached, but the existence of it is the norm. Such a thing was probably achievable in the United States fifty years ago, but instead you are where you are: probably no issue, not even that of gun control, has done as much to poison American political life over the past half century, and things are likely to get even more toxic now.