Roe v Wade is getting a lot of airtime these days. Pundits on both sides of the issue are pretty sure that Alito would try to overturn it given the chance, and "abortion" is getting a lot of wind in the fictitious, parallel universe presidential race of Vinick vs. Santos.
I'm no constitutional lawyer (but then again, neither was Harriet Miers), but I will venture an opinion or two here.
- A lot people may think that if Roe v Wade is overturned, abortions will be banned in the United States. Not true. It simply would mean that states would be allowed under the constitution to impose restrictions on abortion, bringing the issue once again to the political process. That might not be a bad thing, except the transition period until the state legislatures face the reality that the vast majority of their voters favor some kind of abortion on demand.
- You also need to parse the issue a bit more. The current position is that 1) there is a constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy, including one's own body; and 2) that right to privacy extends to a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy. Or not.
- The part of Alito's record that attracts the most attention is that he believed that a married woman should be forced to notify her husband if she plans to have an abortion, except under certain circumstances (the husband is not the father, she's been raped, she can't find her husband to tell him; she can reasonably expect to be physically hurt if she does notify him). This ruling is troubling not because it chips away at Roe v Wade but also because it seems to make the assumption that a married woman's reproductive life is joint property.
- If you follow Alito's premise, a number of implications pop up. Should we force married women to notify their husbands about other matters affecting her reproductive health? Should doctors send a written notice to husbands when their wives change their birth control? Should doctors send a written notice to husbands if they make a medical discovery that changes expectations about a woman's fertility? Does this extend the other way: should men be forced to notify their wives if they undergo a vascectomy?
- It seems pretty self-evident that women ought to inform their husbands if they have an abortion. But that's a matter between married couples. Not doing so might constitute grounds for divorce. But not granting an abortion is too severe of a sanction for what is essentially a private matter.
- If Alito had his way on this matter, it is pretty obvious that married women who wanted an abortion would perjure themselves by swearing that they had been unfaithful to the husbands they wanted to keep in the dark. And let's not be fools here: a lot of people who believe abortions are bad also believe that women who want them are sluts.
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