Roe v Wade is Doomed; in Fact, All Our Rights Are Doomed

The movement to overturn Roe v Wade is characterized by some as a quest to restore states’ rights. I am a cynic about this. In my experience, people who want any level of government to have the kind of intrusive power to regulate women’s reproductive and health decisions don’t give a rat’s patootie about states’ rights. They will argue for state’s rights when they think states will do what they approve of, and they will run to the federal government whenever a state does something they don’t like. They play the states’ rights card when it comes to womb control legislation, but they promote federal legislation to keep states from legalizing marijuana or recognizing same sex marriage. I suppose there could be folks with consistent states’ rights principles who are sincerely pro-womb control and pro-federalism; I’ve just never met anyone of that description so far.

No, if Roe is overturned on states’ rights grounds, that will be an explicit recognition that no federal Constitutional right is at stake, and federal legislation will be considered in short order. It may well fail given that the majority of Americans are not as authoritarian as the GOP, but I don’t really trust the Democrats to protect civil rights on this issue any more than they have on everything else the GOP is determined to take away from us. The womb control mob will not rest until all the states or the feds control every womb in the country.

Of course, I don’t have a uterus, and if a woman in my family needed an abortion we could afford to travel to get one. It would still suck to live in a state governed by people who think they have a right to control your body. What’s next? State mandated calorie counting? Population control? Forced sterilization? Forced pregnancy? It’s all fair game to the authoritarians.

I reckon that if reproductive choice is legislated away, one way to deal with the issue would be to establish charitable organizations to assist low income families in obtaining information and travel services to get treatment where necessary. Such legislation will hit the poor and middle class but will have no impact on the rich and powerful. Senator Foghorn’s daughter or Reverend Busybody’s mistress can hop a jet to Canada any time they need services whereas working class women will be SOL.

Also, I predict that pharmaceuticals will be developed to take the place of intrusive procedures and that women will be able to treat themselves relatively more safely in the future. Of course, these will be made illegal and will be yet another subject of the "War on Medicine".