Roe v. Wade

by Jeremy Leaming

Tea Party activists and many of today’s Republican politicians claim to loathe big government. They say they want a limited government role in our lives. But when it comes to the autonomy of women or privacy rights of gay couples, many of those same activists and politicians clamor for government interference.

A few weeks after Arkansas lawmakers adopted one of the nation’s most restrictive measures on abortions, banning them at 12 weeks of pregnancy; North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed into law an even more outlandish attack on abortion. The law forbids abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detectable, as The New York Times reported earlier this week. Fetal heartbeats, the newspaper noted can be detected “as early as six weeks” by using an invasive procedure, a transvaginal ultrasound.

In his statement announcing signing of the bill, HB 1456, into law, Gov. Dalrymple said “the likelihood of this measure surviving a court challenge remains in question,” but it is nevertheless “a legitimate attempt by a state legislature to discover the boundaries of Roe v. Wade.”

Discovering the boundaries of Roe is a euphemism for lawmakers’ efforts to topple the landmark Supreme Court opinion. State lawmakers have been on a tear over the last few years passing measures aimed at making it incredibly difficult for women to obtain abortions, especially for women with little means to travel long distances to find a physician willing and able to perform abortions. It is not enough that lawmakers have crafted laws that force women to listen to government propaganda about the alleged dangers of abortions or undergo invasive medical procedures; they want the ability to bar women from receiving abortions.

In Roe, the high court held that the Constitution’s protections of privacy include the decision to have an abortion. The Roe Court only said that states could regulate that right at the point of viability, about 24 weeks.

by Jeremy Leaming

Advocates of privacy rights, especially reproductive rights, have had one challenge after another mostly from state lawmakers bent on destroying those rights.  

As reported earlier this week, religious groups were successful in lobbying the Arkansas legislature to adopt what The New York Times called the “country’s most restrictive ban on abortion – at 12 weeks” of pregnancy.

The landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade, found that the Constitution provides women “the right of personal privacy,” which “includes the abortion decision ….” Like many rights protected in the Constitution it’s not an unlimited one. And the Roe Court found that states have a compelling interest to regulate abortion at the point of viability, usually around 24 weeks, as The Times notes.

The law’s sponsor, according to The Times, “compared the more than 50 million abortions in the United States since Roe” to the “Holocaust ….”

That overwrought language is unfortunately typical of too many state lawmakers from coast to coast who for over the past several years have strived to create more laws to make it much more difficult for women to obtain abortions. As former U.S. Solicitor General Walter Dellinger has noted, it’s annoyingly ironic that conservative lawmakers who blasted the Affordable Care Act as attempting to strip liberty from Americans are the ones pushing laws depriving women of their liberties. Women have the ability to make health care decisions for themselves, but right-wing lawmakers are more concerned about embryos, which do not have constitutional rights.

Because the Arkansas law so blatantly violates Roe, it is likely to be quickly challenged, as it should be.

Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice American, blasted the law, saying “This is another example of how anti-choice politicians are obsessed with rolling back reproductive rights guaranteed by the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision more than 40 years ago. This law robs women of control over their own lives and puts that control in the hands of politicians in Little Rock. This intrusive, extreme agenda is out of touch with our nation’s values and priorities – and we stand firmly in opposition.”

Too many state lawmakers have been obsessed with restricting the rights of women. Their priorities are regressive and obnoxious in the face of budget difficulties and people who need jobs or government services to help them become trained for new jobs. Instead of harassing women, state lawmakers should focus on issues that will bolster, not harm their communities.