It’s time to trust democracy again after Roe v. Wade

Progressive outrage greeted this week’s US Supreme Court majority decision which overturned Roe v. Wade. ‘Extreme ideology,’ thundered Joe Biden. It was ‘a huge blow to women’s human rights’ according to Michelle Bachelet at the UN; a case of ‘back to the Middle Ages,’ in the view of one melodramatic performer at Glastonbury.

These are understandable views. But they are still misguided.

Some background can help. Before January 1973 abortion in America was a state law matter. Some states were restrictive, some liberal: it all depended on public opinion and local politics. Roe v. Wade changed all that. It determined that the US Constitution implicitly protected the right to abortion almost absolutely up to three months and in many cases up to six, and thereby essentially took the issue away from the states entirely. Although the details later changed, from then on, whatever local voters or representatives might think, state laws restricting abortions further than the Supreme Court had allowed were automatically ineffective.