Yes, I suspect it would galvanize women voters in a lot of states - including Republicans - who have always assumed the protections of Roe would be there for them.
Roe v Wade was a premature decision. Society was still making up its mind about this issue when the Supreme Court ruled. As a result a whole lot of people were told to shut up. That made them dig in their heels.
The trend before Roe was toward the pro-choice side. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) The ruling fired up the Antis.
So turning to the question before this house, if states were allowed to outlaw abortion, a lot of them would. This would fire up the choice people in a way nibbling at abortion has not done. There would be much yelling and screaming.
But that is what political decision-making often is.
If Roe is overturned, even the most pro-life state would have to allow abortion because a whole lot of the electorate demands it.
This seems clearly false. Republican states are throwing obstacle after obstacle to abortion, to the point where zero or one clinic remains, and keep winning elections in those states.
There were 6 states where abortion was legal before Roe v Wade, so I would disagree with this assesment.
There are states passing straight up bans right now with the assumption that the new conservative SCOTUS will uphold them.
It’s not like SCOTUS is going to go into session and come out saying, “We’ve revoked Roe v Wade, you can ban abortion now.” What it is is that states pass laws, and if someone feels that that law violates the constitution, they contest that law, hoping that SCOTUS eventually agrees with them.
Many of the laws passed right now violate Roe v Wade, and are specifically an attempt to get that precedent overturned.
States are not pro-choice or anti-abortion. The electorate is.
I didn’t say that it was a goal. I said that it was a consequence if the Republicans manage to get their way.
They’ve been doing their best. But it seems that one of the few things that get people interested in exercising their suffrage is the threat of it being taken away. I don’t know that I take it as a given that their efforts will continue to be fruitful for them.
Yes, when the legislature does silly, symbolic, acts people are fine with it. When the legislature begins to have an impact on people’s lives, I suppose things will change.
How very like the filibuster in the Senate. As long as the Congress is prevented from passing anything, members can propose and speechify about all sorts of silly things. Once the way is clear for their actions to become law, they will be forced into moderation.
These aren’t silly symbolic acts. There are multiple states that lost all but one abortion clinic due to this legislation. There are states where you have to travel hundreds of miles, get checked, and then wait a day and come back. These are real impact to people’s lives, especially poor people.
It’s like you’re posting from the 90s or something. Republican legislatures have all but banned abortion in many states and forced the closing of most clinics in many states with bullshit requirements, all with zero effect on their electoral success.
If you’re a poor person in Missouri, you have to travel to the one remaining clinic, visit, wait 72 hours, get told in detail about the fetus, gestational age, told that the fetus can feel pain (which is clearly false early on), and on and on.
I find it bizarre that you think that getting 95% or 99% to a ban is A-OK with the electorate, but that final few percent will make all the difference. However, this isn’t really subject to debate, since it’s all hypothetical.
Anyway, this topic is pretty played out, so I’ll probably bow out. Here’s hoping the Supreme Court just throws it out to the states and doesn’t ban it completely!
Something I would mind is these access issues disproportionately affect minority and lower income women, demographics that do not vote Republican in particularly high numbers and are not part of the voting coalition Republicans rely on in any state in which they have power. Middle class / upper class women who get abortions, and who are sometimes Republican, likely will find reason to get upset if they are outright banned. Abortion is a complex issue with complex emotions involved. Lots of people who will never be in a position of needing one are totally fine with it, lots of people never in a position of needing one are totally against it. Lots of people have a certain set of feelings/emotions on abortion, but then they themselves have a fetus with serious issues and abortion suddenly appears to be a different sort of option to them.
One of the things that undermined Ireland’s strict abortion ban, is even though the law provided for allowing abortions for the health of the mother, doctors frequently didn’t want to be the ones making that “guess” if a court would determine after the fact that the abortion was for a genuine medical need. So you had a few high profile cases of doctors unwilling to take the risk, and women with dangerous pregnancies being forced to carry them to term, and then subsequently dying. There’s a lot of nasty issues like this from a complete abortion ban that I think don’t get sensationalized or politicized much today where abortion is still accessible to most of the types of women who vote Republican.
Unless there’s a nationwide ban, those middle and upper class women who vote Republican will have no problem getting on a plane for a vacation in NYC with side trip to the abortion clinic. So, I agree with you that a nationwide ban would be an issue for those Republican women who want to get one, but if it just goes back to the states? It’s not as hard for them to take time off from work, travel to where they’ll need to go, etc., so I disagree that it would push them to vote pro-choice if they aren’t already voting that way.
But what the Fundamentalists want is outright zygotian personhood. Perhaps even gametean (every sperm is sacred…). They want national codification of prenatal “murder”, so those UMC lasses would not be able to just fly to NYC to have this thing taken care of. Some states have drafted laws to make it illegal to go to another state to have it taken care of, and the Fundies would be ecstatic if the law of the land allowed for prison time for getting a Swedish abortion.
The biggest problem here is that SCotUS is insulated from the political process. If they hand down a ruling stifling abortion rights, that ruling could stand for decades, and no amount of voting would be enough to change it, because we will not gain Amendment-level majorities in Congress as long as Republicans continue to BS their way into office.