Overruling Roe

[Mark Graber]

Several thoughts.

1.  As the Democratic party has become a much better vehicle for
abortion rights and similar, it has become a much worse vehicle for
labor and welfare rights.  I believe there to be a connection and am
presently working on this.  So, for those of us who think that poor
people may have rights to matters other than a state-funded abortion,
the overrule of ROE may not improve matters.

2.  The main impact of ROE was to dramatically reduce the price of
abortions and make abortions safe.  These will remain as long as ROE
remains legal.  Is there some reason to believe that those who
repeatedly, constantly assert that a "hollow Roe" is meaningless are
more concerned with the upperclass right not to have abortion
stigmatized that the right of poor people to safe and relatively cheap
abortions (and for those who disagree, please, I beg you, read the data
from the militantly pro-choice Guttmacher Institution on just how little
practical impact abortion funding bans have on the availability of
abortion services to poor persons).

3.  As I have repeatedly argued, the present United States is presently
divided into two factions.  The party of the rich that fights to the
death on welfare and caves on abortion, and the party of the other rich
that fights to the death on abortion and caves on welfare.

Mark A. Graber

>>> <RJLipkin at aol.com> 11/17/05 7:25 AM >>>
If the Roberts' Court  pretends to uphold Roe, but regulates it
virtually 
"out of  existence," what will remain of the right to abortion? To put
it 
differently,  isn't there a rather narrow range of limitations
available?  And if  
that range is exhausted, how will it be possible even to pretend to
recognize  
Roe's precedential value? And if the Roberts' Court retains  Roe, but
never 
meets a regulation it doesn't support, how will that  affect politics?  

 
Bobby
 
Robert Justin  Lipkin
Professor of Law
Widener University School of  Law
Delaware