Abortion and the Next Supreme Court Justice
Posted by Jim at July 5th, 2005
With the retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor, people have, as always, begun to speculate about how the next the Supreme Court will affect the legality of abortion.
What I find interesting is that people come to each new Supreme Court nomination as if it would instantly make abortion legal or illegal. I’ll grant you that they have to in order to rally the troops (whichever troops you prefer to rally), but neither the next Supreme Court justice nor even a decision reversing Roe v. Wade will necessarily end the struggle over this issue.
What I mean by this is that first of all, five of the current nine justices have stated that they will vote against attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade–that’s without O’Connor. If that’s true, abortion’s not likely to become illegal anytime soon.
Secondly, the aftereffects of reversing Roe v. Wade don’t necessarily outlaw abortion. The argument just moves over to each individual state, fragmenting the struggle. Some places would instantly outlaw it, others instantly legalize it, and others would undoubtedly struggle for years over the precise circumstances under which abortion is allowed or denied.
In the end, it seems likely that we would have a patchwork of standards. Bearing in mind that people can legally visit any state they want, abortion seems likely to end only at the federal level.
I can’t help but be curious about the likely political consequences. I’ve often thought that the Republican party’s pro-life stance has bought it many votes it might not have otherwise gotten. If there’s no Roe v. Wade to point to, it becomes harder to argue that voting for a Democratic presidential candidate is a vote for abortion rights. In my more cynical moments, I’ve often thought that it was in the Republican party’s best interest to constantly work for outlawing abortion, but to never actually succeed in doing so.
Indeed the main point of the article I linked to earlier is that success on abortion could cause major problems for the Republican party. I think it goes a little overboard on the negative consequences, but it definitely seems likely to require some restructuring afterwards.
Whatever happens, I don’t think anybody is going to get exactly what they want. Thus I write this little essay in the hopes of deflating both people’s hopes and fears in this area.
I think you are on to something with your statement that the Republican Party has gotten many votes because of its pro-life platform. I suspect that this is a primary reason so many Christians have confused their faith with a political party. Since Reagan Christians have associated pro-life views with the Republicans and since most Christians are pro-life based on their understanding of the Scriptures, in their view the Republican Party most closely follows the Scriptures (on this one issue). The association between the two has been clearly blurred (heh) so that dissent on other issues has, for some, become synonymous with denying the faith.
jtr
It’s interesting that in the past evangelicals (with the exception of Reformed evangelicals) were constantly suspicious of getting involved in government. People had to really work to change that. Now, of course, one might argue that some evangelical Christians confuse Christianity with political affiliation.
I can’t say that it’s unique to evangelical Christians though. I remember having lunch with a conservative Rabbi (who was involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue) who commented that some Jews seemed to think that the 11th commandment was “Thou shalt be a Democrat.”
It would be interesting to do some research and follow trends in how strongly Christians identify with a particular party and which party that is. For example, the Dutch immigrants who came to the US in the mid 1800’s were solidly Democratic when the Democrats were the conservative party. Later, you’ll find that the average member of the Christian Reformed Church tended to vote Republican. This changed when the Democrats became the party further to the left (sometime around the 1930’s with Roosevelt and the New Deal).
For the last while (possibly starting with with Carter), evangelicals have been pretty involved with politics, much like the mainline Protestant denominations were around the turn of the last century (1800’s to 1900’s). I can’t help but wonder if Bush (like McKinley) is the high point of this involvement. It seems possible anyway. I’m inclined to think that these things run in cycles.
Jim Zoetewey