I recognize that many conservatives would argue that UNLESS we nominate right-wing judges, far more children will be killed due to abortion than would be killed by the death penalty. That is a fair critique, but I think the premise is flawed.
What would happen if the 5-4 majority in support of Rowe flipped the other way? The issue would go back to the states, where almost half of them are likely to keep abortion legal. It would also be legal in most of the rest of the world. Furthermore, many women would go underground for their abortions. The net effect is that we are unlikely to significantly reduce the number of abortions in our country simply by changing one justice, but we run the risk of doing irreparable damage to our country by having a court which is friendly to the Republicans’ “Constitution be damned” mentality.
The answer is not to do violence to the Constitution in order to make abortion slightly more difficult to obtain. Rather, the answer is to provide a safety net which prevents unplanned pregnancies from being a life sentence to poverty. And yes, the answer is also to have a realistic policy toward contraception which prevents unplanned pregnancies in the first place.
