It’s one thing to overturn Roe v. Wade. The decision’s author, the late Justice Harry Blackmun, was quoted as saying that it was bad law, but he didn’t care. He wanted abortion legal nationally. That’s the kind of Supreme Court over reach that ought never to happen.
The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated in a 1992 speech at New York University that Roe was bad law; abortion law should be left to the states, she said, and at most the Texas law in question should have been overturned. At the same time, I’ll bet she wouldn’t have voted to overturn Roe.
What Roe did was galvanize antiabortion people and organizations, who had not been united, into a powerful force — one much more focused on achieving their objective than the pro-abortion forces were on maintaining the status quo.
It appears that the overturning will usher in a brave new anti abortion world, a world much more restrictive, and bizarre, than the pre-Roe world. Where abortion might have been illegal before, but commonly performed, now it appears the abortion police will be watching. In many states it will be a world where government is much more concerned with, and aware of, the fetus. Perhaps we'll see fetus welfare police. They might go nicely with the voting police in Florida.
In Tennessee, any fetus conceived in the state will instantly be a citizen of that state. Accordingly, if a woman leaves the state to have an abortion, she will be a murderer, and can be so prosecuted. If a woman conceives during a one-night hotel stay in Memphis, her fetus will be a citizen of Tennessee, and she will be guilty of murder if she subsequently has an abortion in her home state. It’s not clear how this will be tracked, or how the Constitution’s Commerce Clause would pertain, though Congress has made a mockery of the Commerce Clause in the last sixty years, so presumably the Volunteer State has free play to pursue anyone it wishes.
And what of the Senators who voted to confirm certain ultra conservative justices, having asked them if they respected Roe as settled law? If they actually believed the responses they received, then they are just a great a set of fools as Susan Collins (R-ME) appears whenever she opens her mouth. The pro-choice forces had their chance, and on the weak backs, and weaker characters of Susan Collins and Claire McCaskill they failed, if ever they had a chance.
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