Pro-choice advocate: Let Roe go

From Megan McArdle in The Washington Post: 

I am myself uneasily pro-choice. Moreover, just a few days ago, I argued that the increasingly bitter judicial wars tearing apart today’s politics can only be ended with more judicial deference to legislatures and to precedent. It stands to reason that I would be dismayed by the politically electrifying prospect that Roe might be overruled entirely. But I wouldn’t be dismayed. I’d be glad to see Roe go, as quickly as possible.

How can someone who calls herself pro-choice oppose Roe v. Wade? Let me count the ways.

The decision itself is a poorly reasoned mess. It failed to mount a convincing case that the Constitution contains language that can be read as guaranteeing a woman’s right to abort her pregnancy. Nor have the subsequent courts that amended and extended Roemanaged to come up with a constitutional justification; it’s all “emanations and penumbras” and similarly float-y language that did little to convince opponents that Roe v. Wade was a good or necessary ruling. Even many liberal supporters of a constitutional right to abortion have voiced concerns about the way the Burger Court got us there; those critics include Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

That poor drafting quasi-accidentally left America with some of the most permissive abortion laws in the world, far beyond what most legislatures would permit if the matter were open to public debate. Today, the United States is one of only a handful of countries to allow elective abortions after the 20th gestational week.

And that, in turn, is the biggest problem with Roe: It has given the most religious developed country in the world one of the world’s most permissive abortion laws. This is not some peculiar quirk of the American political psyche. The abortion law is out of step with what the majority of the population wants, and given the seriousness of what’s involved, it is Roe, more than any other opinion, that is driving both the radicalization and the judicialization of American politics, as pro-lifers fight like caged tigers to amend the law through the only avenue left open to them.

Read the rest.