Abortion after 'Akron':
Neuhaus, Richard John
The Supreme Court ABORTION AFTER 'AKRON' THE CONTRADICTIONS ARE SHOWING ON JUNE 15, the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional, among other measures, even the slight regulations which the city of...
...In view of our dreary clutch of candidates, this poses a hard choice for those of us who are Democrats...
...Significantly, a seemingly weary majority does not even attempt to defend the illogic of Roe v Wade...
...As Justice O'Connor points out, the decision reveals a logic that is on a collision course with itself...
...In doing so, the Court struck down the similar restrictions established in twenty-one states...
...The third collision is between "the basic premise of Roe and its progeny" and a dissent that will with two additional votes become, as they say, the law of the land...
...The choice of viability as the point at which the state interest in potential life becomes compelling is no less arbitrary than choosing any point before viability or any point afterward...
...If, however, the Court is serious about its previously professed concern for fetal life at the point of "viability," medical technology is fast moving "viability" back into the first trimester...
...Six old men have made it official...
...As Justice Powell, writing for the current majority, notes, "The dissenting opinion rejects the basic premise of Roe and its progeny " Precisely...
...The law is the law is the law...
...The statement that the 1973 decision removed all legal protections from the unborn can no longer be dismissed as "an extreme interpretation...
...According to the dissent: "At any stage in pregnancy, there is the potential for human life...
...If Ronald Reagan fills the vacancies, it is highly probable that today's majority opinion on abortion will become tomorrow's dissent...
...Politically, the decision collides with the wishful thinking of legislators who wanted to believe that Roe v Wade did not really mean what it said...
...The reference of course is to Roe v Wade, and O'Connor's argument, joined by Justices Rehnquist and White, is that the Court is caught in the impossible bind of trying to have it both ways...
...I say "six old men" not to be insulting but because it is a fact perturent to the third and probable collision O'Connor, Rehnquist, and White are likely to be around for some time Their dissent leaves no room for doubt that, if they had their way, the collision would be head-on and devastating to Roe v Wade...
...The alternative is to acknowledge that Roe v Wade was in error and, more than ten million deaths later, the implications of that are too horrible to contemplate...
...In her dissent from the Akron decision, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote, "The Roe framework, then, is clearly on a collision course with itself...
...Internal contradictions, legislative remedies, and the politics of the judiciary all combine to make it manifest that thirteen years later Roe v Wade is not the "settled public policy" that its partisans had hoped and claimed it to be RICHARD JOHN NEUHAUS (The Rev Richard John Neuhaus is the editor of Lutheran Forum )ran Forum...
...If neither Askew nor Jackson is the candidate, however, we will likely have to choose between Reagan and a candidate who would use his appointive power and political influence to perpetuate the most grave single injustice in our national life...
...It simply invokes the doctrine of stare decisis ("stand by the decision") Even while doing so, it admits that the doctrine is "perhaps never entirely persuasive in a constitutional question" but nonetheless "demands respect in a society governed by the rule of law...
...The more thoughtful of them might privately worry about the consequences of the Court's colliding with the comfortable lie that made Roe v Wade tolerable to many Americans...
...Only Reuben Askew seems to have heard of the millions of voters who are "pro-life...
...Until Akron, otherwise well-informed people who did not want to think very much about it chose to believe that under Roe v Wade there was some protection for unborn life after the first trimester...
...The pro-choice celebration of Akron, then, may be wrong-headed...
...If the concern is solely for maternal health, abortion technology is moving the right to have an abortion "further forward to actual childbirth...
...If Jesse Jackson joins the race, it would be of more than passing interest to see whether he maintains his eloquent protest of abortion as "a war against the poor...
...There are two other collisions in sight, one almost certain and the other probable...
...Six old men, and soon there will be five or four or maybe even three...
...The almost certain collision is political and bears upon the "pro-life" legislative agenda...
...In order to avoid the collision, at least three justices think it would become the majesty of the Court to consult a guide more constant than the latest bulletin about the techniques of saving or taking life...
...The Supreme Court ABORTION AFTER 'AKRON' THE CONTRADICTIONS ARE SHOWING ON JUNE 15, the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional, among other measures, even the slight regulations which the city of Akron, Ohio, had attempted to place on abortions after the first three months of pregnancy...
...Accordingly the state's interest in protecting potential human life exists throughout the pregnancy...
...This pitiable source of comfort has been shattered by Akron "Pro-choice" activists publicly cheered Akron because it makes clear that the "right to abortion" is unqualified...
...The legal illogic is not the only collision course illuminated by Akron...
Vol. 110 • July 1983 • No. 13
