The jurist, Ronald Dworkin, once described the vehemence of the dispute over abortion as ‘America’s new version of the terrible seventeenth-century European civil wars of religion. Opposing armies march down streets or pack themselves into protests at abortion clinics, courthouses, and the White House, screaming at and spitting on and loathing one another. Abortion is tearing America apart.’
That’s exactly what we see today. The US Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe decision has, of course, for almost half a century been an ideological football. Last week’s leaked draft of what appears to be a volte face by the Court merely revived the acrimony and rancour that the issue inexorably generates.
In his draft opinion Justice Alito described Roe as ‘egregiously wrong from the start’ because ‘a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions.’
Roe is the slender thread by which the right of American women to a lawful abortion hangs. It never should have been
This may be so, but there is a deeper flaw in the historic decision.
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