Biden, Roe vs Wade and the politics of Abortion

The fight over Roe vs Wade isn't about the rights of women or the unborn child, but rather about how American politics uses issues to energize voting mandates to serve the interests of politicians

By Ray Hanania

FREE/Politics, Abortion/Tuesday July 9, 2024

American politics has a major flaw. It is built on the premise that a political candidate on a national level must have an issue to champion in order to energize voters to their candidacy.

The flaw in that thinking is that in achieving one's goal to "resolve" an issue, that the issue goes away and no longer becomes the foundation for energizing supportive voter activism.

In other words, political activism needs a "cause." And when that "cause" goes away or is resolved, politics becomes vacuous. Voters become indifferent.

No politician wants voters who are "indifferent," especially in a society in which less than half of the people who can vote actually go to the ballot polls to vote. In many cases, voter turnout is even less.

So, in many cases, politicians don't want to resolve issues because they would rather have the challenges survive to provide the base of support they need to get re-elected.

That has always been the case with the issue of immigration reform. If you reform it and "fix it," then what?

And it is also the case of abortion.

Photo courtesy of Unsplash.com. volodymyr-hryshchenko-87ev1NvhDsU-unsplash

Up until 1973, abortion was considered illegal. But that year, the issue of abortion was "resolved" by the U.S. Supreme Court when it ruled that individuals, not governments, are responsible for making the decision to continue or to end a pregnancy.

The decision stemmed from a legal fight between "Jane Roe" — an alias for a Texas resident named Norma McCorvey — and Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade. In 1969, McCorvey was denied an abortion because the District Attorney argued her pregnancy didn't pose a medical risk to her life.

The case was identified as Roe vs Wade and it has become the foundation of how many Americans have viewed abortion and the "right to life."

The principle has been repeatedly articulated including on June 24, 2022, when a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade on the basis of a ruling involving a case called Dobbs vs Jackson Women's Health.

The bottom line is that the Supreme Court concluded abortion is not a "Constitutional Right": and that the issue of abortion should be decided by the individual states.

In a dissenting opinion in response to the Supreme Court's decision, Justices Sonia Sotomayer, Elena Kagan and Stephen G. Breyer explained:

"For half a century, Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973), and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992), have protected the liberty and equality of women. Roe held, and Casey reaffirmed, that the Constitution safeguards a woman's right to decide for herself whether to bear a child. Roe held, and Casey reaffirmed, that in the first stages of pregnancy, the government could not make that choice for women. The government could not control a woman's body or the course of a woman's life: It could not determine what the woman's future would be. See Casey, 505 U. S., at 853; Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U. S. 124, 171-172 (2007) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting). Respecting a woman as an autonomous being, and granting her full equality, meant giving her substantial choice over this most personal and most consequential of all life decisions."

Throwing the issue back to the states makes it more of a political decision.

There are several issues at hand but most range from banning abortion completely to determining how long during a pregnancy can an abortion be administered before a fetus becomes an unborn child.

The middle ground has always been that abortions should be legal during the first trimester of a nine month pregnancy, and only in cases involving rape, incest or protecting the health of a mother.

And of course, abortion has become another major political issue, especially for Democrats.

Joe Biden was the President when Ros vs Wade was overturned two years ago.

And yet, during a political rally he made in Wisconsin, Biden declared that the country needed to re-elect him because he needs to restore Rose vs Wade.

Why didn't he restore it during the past two years? Can he really make the argument that it couldn't be restored in four years but it could be restored in six years, if he gets re-elected to a second term?

Abortion is politics. Extremists on both sides have exploited abortion as an instrument of activism, rather than solely as either a woman's right or an unborn child's right.

The reasoned voice believes that abortion can take place during the first 12 to 14 weeks of a pregnancy which is the result of rape or incest, or a pregnancy that threatens the life of a mother.

The unreasoned voice argues that abortion can be used a birth control and take place anytime during a pregnancy including just prior to birth when an unborn child is near full infant development.

Defenders of abortion call it "women's rights." Foes of abortion call it "right to life."

Neither side will compromise. But Roe vs Wade had a major flaw, too, allowing different interpretations of when and why abortions could take place.

A smart leader would argue for a compromise to allow women the choice to have an abortion during the first trimester, but to prohibit abortions during the latter trimesters, unless again, the pregnancy posed a threat to a woman's life.

Biden could have made that argument, but he did not. The collapse of Roe vs Wade has given the Left a foundation to pander to women voters, Democrats and Republicans.

But that's not a reasonable position on why abortions should be allowed. The reasonable position is that abortions should be approved beyond the first trimester if it is necessary to protect a woman's life. The unborn child should have a right to birth and life.

The only way to avoid this emotional issue is to take the pregnancy out of the political arena by taking it out of a woman's womb and placing it in a test tube where a pregnancy decision can be a true choice of fairness for all sides.

That's the commonsense theory of compromise to respect the rights of all women, not just a majority that favor abortions or a majority of women who oppose abortion.

But in today's polarized American society of hatred, acrimony and extremism, there is no middle ground and there is no place to nurture commonsense.

Abortion will remain a political issue, exploited by politicians on all sides.