Taking Honesty Out of Roe v Wade

I’m a bit slow with this, but David Lewis Schaefer has an article ‘Putting some honesty in Roe v. Wade debate’ that takes out honesty from the debate.

It starts off ok, noting that the decision rests on what some people consider shaky grounds, a right to privacy (although this:

If the Constitution contains a right to privacy, why am I required to disclose my income to the Internal Revenue Service?

is silly-he does know that there are no absolute rights, that one of the points of courts is to decide between competing rights, doesn’t he?), but he quickly starts to say some silly and/or dishonest things:

That’s why the liberalization or abolition of abortion restrictions by numerous state legislatures during the years leading up to 1973 generated far less bitterness among abortion opponents than Roe v. Wade has done.

And if he believes there would not be the same bitter debate right now if abortion had been legalized state by state, he’s stupid. A couple of reasons it wasn’t as bad in the 1960s and early 1970s–the second wave of feminism hadn’t really come into power yet and so it was easier to ignore them; opposition takes a while to coalesce (Roe v Wade did jumpstart the pro-life movement but the opposition would have continued to build without it if the number of states allowing abortion had continued to increase).

Indeed, Dred Scott offers an ominous anticipation of Roe v. Wade, in that in both instances some members of the court sought to “resolve” a divisive issue simply by adopting a manifestly specious reading of the Constitution. In neither instance did the result prove promising, from the point of view of reducing national acrimony.

Finally, the reversal of Roe v. Wade would not in itself limit abortion rights. It would simply return the issue to the state governments, which is where the Constitution left it all along.

Here I’m not even sure what he’s trying to get at. I thought he said that abortion wasn’t divisive before Roe v Wade? There is a similarity to the two cases, the two sides believed irreconcilabe things (slavery is evil against slavery is needed and abortion is murder against women need to be able to control their body). Then that next bit is just weird, it seems to imply that he would have been ok with leaving the slavery issue to the states. Hmm.

In the years immediately preceding Roe v. Wade, some 18 states – including several in the South – either liberalized or abolished their restrictions on abortion. Since public opinion polls now show an increased acceptance of abortion (at least in the first trimester or in cases of rape or threats to the mother’s health), few states are likely to adopt an outright ban if the courts allowed them to do so. Nor are any bans likely to be enforced by the imprisonment of physicians or their patients, as partisans of Roe v. Wade have warned.

So, it’s not a big deal if suddenly millions of women can’t have an abortion? And remember an outright ban would not have to include an exception in case of the health of the woman (that has only been enforced by the Supreme Court which would no longer have any jurisdiction) and if you consider the original ‘partial birth’ abortion bill (which contained no such exception) then you have to accept that such a bill would be possible. Finally, the last sentence is just crazy. Why exactly would the group pushing for an abortion ban, which includes people who will kill doctors who perform abortions, accept a ban with no real penalties? My prediction: if Roe v Wade goes down many states would outlaw abortion, at least a few would have near absolute restrictions, and at least a few would have real punishment (probably for the doctor). I get my predictions from the past before Roe v Wade, where does he get his prediction from?