Opinion of Roe vs Wade

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Great historic decision.

The fact that it's only polling 49% here as opposed to 60%-75% nationally is one of the cases where the white male skew of this Forum really outweighs its liberalism.

Posters here, being keyed into political debates, probably are more knowledgeable on the whole than the general public about what the decision actually is.   A lot of Americans support Roe v Wade, but also support restricting abortion in ways Roe does not allow.  

Hispanics are a bit more anti-abortion than whites who are a bit more anti-abortion than blacks; the racial difference isn't huge.  Young single women are the most supportive demographic for abortion rights; older married women with children are the least.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

My opinion here is the same as RBG's; terrible decision that strangled the nascent pro-abortion legalization movement in its cradle and prevented the issue from being decisively won by the pro-choice side. Was also very poorly thought out.

That said, is having abortion be legal the better policy? Yes, of course. Should it be overturned 47 years later? No, not unless virtually all states adopt laws keeping abortion legal in its absence.

interesting metaphor for this issue


Roe v Wade gave the abortion legalization movement what it wanted far beyond what was possible legislatively.  It helped galvanize the opposition to abortion, it's true, but the pro-lifers pre-Roe were already fighting back against abortion legalization efforts.

In 1971, twenty-five states considered abortion legalization bills. Every one of them failed to pass. In 1972, the pro-life movement went on the offensive and began campaigning for measures to rescind recently passed abortion legalization laws and tighten existing abortion restrictions. In the wake of the Central Park protest, the New York state legislature voted to repeal New York’s liberal abortion law and was thwarted only by Governor Rockefeller’s veto.

https://time.com/4154084/anti-abortion-pre-roe/

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Your position assumes that the unborn are unworthy of due process or the equal protection of the law. There's nothing in the Constitution to either make that assumption or make the opposite assumption that the unborn are worthy of due process and the equal protection of the law. Without a textual basis to make that decision, the Court should have left the decision to the legislative branch to make.

The suggestion that there is a plausible reading of the 14th that includes "unborn persons" in the category of persons entitled to due process and equal protection is absurd. Nowhere in the 14th is the word "persons" interpreted to include fetuses — pregnant women are not counted as two people when apportioning representatives by "counting the whole number of persons in each State," and the Citizenship Clause explicitly reserves citizenship to persons born in the US.

There is also nothing in the historical record to suggest that the authors of the 14th intended it to extend to "unborn persons," and there is certainly no precedent supporting that reading. Positioning those as as two equally valid (or even remotely comparable) readings of the document requires a particularly blinkered textualism, in the process producing a far more expansive interpretation of the 14th than what is relied on in Blackmun's opinion in Roe (to say nothing of the even more restrictive view advocated by White in dissent).

Many of the states that passed the 14th amendment also passed laws banning abortion around the same time, often under their homicide codes. I'm not sure whether anyone expected the 14th to apply to banning abortion, but there's a stronger argument than for allowing it. At the very least the original meaning would have included saying that if there were a law banning abortion for whites but not for blacks, it would be applicable as a violation of equal protection of the child's life.