What Happens if John McCain And Sarah Palin Get Their Way Getting Rid of Choice

When John McCain put "health of the mother" in finger quotes to mock those considerations when thinking about choice, he tipped his hat to the dismissive underlying feelings of conservatives. They really think women choose abortions out of callousness. And don't really care about the health of women. If they are negatively effected in subjugating them to their narrow world view, oh well. The result if McCain and Palin win is as I have said. They won't outlaw abortion, but get supreme court justices who will get rid of Roe by saying it is a state issue. Linda Hirshman's Washington Post Editorial explains: In the 1980s, when abortion was severely limited in then-West Germany, border guards sometimes required German women returning from foreign trips to undergo vaginal examinations to make sure that they hadn't illegally terminated a pregnancy while they were abroad. According to news stories and other accounts, the guards would stop young women and ask them about drugs, then look for evidence of abortion, such as sanitary pads or nightgowns, in their cars, and eventually force them to undergo a medical examination -- as West German law empowered them to do. Sounds like a nightmare of a police state, doesn't it? Like something that could never happen in this day and age -- and certainly not in the United States? But depending upon the outcome of this presidential election, it could happen here. This is how. ...President McCain appoints a suitably conservative replacement, and a complaisant or cowed Senate confirms the nomination. Then, an ambitious district attorney in Alabama, Delaware or any one of more than a dozen other states with old abortion laws still on the books or a new, untested abortion restriction prosecutes a local clinic for performing the procedure. (Legal scholars pretty much agree that laws from before Roe v. Wade can be revived.) The clinic goes to federal court; after appeals, the case goes to the Supreme Court, which votes 5-4 to overturn Roe. And we're back to the '60s . ...Is it possible, you ask, that in a post- Roe world, states would be able to pass valid laws stopping women from leaving to obtain an abortion? It seems un-American. But a lot of law professors have looked at this question, and although they're still debating it, many of the best in the business believe that this is something states probably can do. "To speak of the fetus' " home state, and make the home it shares with the mother "a basis" for controlling a woman's ability to get an abortion might "make sense," Columbia law professor Gerald Neuman wrote in 1993 when abortion rights were last in peril. If you overturn Roe you have to take away the right of women to control their bodies. And get rid of the sacred right of privacy. The right to have control of your own sexuality. Without any of those protections what would stop states from making it illegal to travel out of the state to have abortions. Moreover, a Supreme Court that reversed Roe could also rule more broadly that the fetus is a person under the Fourteenth Amendment. Such a ruling would be the flip side of Roe, making state support of abortion a constitutional offense. There are barriers to using the Constitution affirmatively to stop abortions nationwide, but such an ambitious ruling would surely encourage the anti-abortion states' most restrictive plans and increase the pressure on Congress to pass a national law restricting abortion. Don't forget that even many Democrats voted in favor of the late-term abortion ban. Even if the Senate, uncharacteristically, refused to confirm a McCain nominee -- or nominees, if he kept sending up names -- leaving the court at eight justices, women's options would probably erode rapidly. It's easy to imagine the anti-abortion states pushing the envelope with once improbably restrictive laws, such as one requiring clinics to be licensed by the state and prohibiting women from getting abortions in unlicensed clinics, either in- or out-of-state. If a clinic went to federal court to enjoin such a law, the case would eventually reach one of the 13 federal Courts of Appeal, 11 of which are firmly dominated by Republican appointees and would probably produce a decision either refusing to follow Roe or, more likely, making some transparent distinction between Roe and the new case. In a divided Supreme Court, four justices would probably vote to affirm the lower court, and four to reverse, leaving the appeals court's decision standing. This means that the states that fell within the Circuit in question would come under an anti-abortion umbrella allowing anything up to explicit reversal of Roe. How would state laws forbidding pregnant women to leave be enforced? The Hope Clinic in Granite City, Ill., is just 10 minutes from the Missouri border. Police from the prohibiting state can just take the license plates of local vehicles at the abortion clinics across the state lines and arrest the women when they re-enter the state. Or a traffic stop can produce a search. Tips from pharmacy workers, disapproving parents or disappointed boyfriends can alert the police to arrest the pregnant woman for intent to seek an abortion out of state. The state law may allow interested parties to seek injunctions to stop her from leaving. If you care about women and their health the election is very clear. Writer's note in the first publication of this blog in the wee hours last night as I was lining up posts for today so I could do get out the vote in Pennsylvania (for another 12 hours) I forgot to link to Linda Hirshman's Editorial. This was clearly an oversight as her words were clearly demarcated from my own. This blog makes no money but seeks to be an advocate for positive change to those who are my friends and stumble upon it. Nearly all would have missed Linda's words as such I felt it important to give them as much as possible. For that I have been attacked by people who purport to be allies. To those who seek to dare down me for a simple mistake I say SHAME ON YOU. SHAME ON YOU for not having some form of patience and compassion for a simple mistake. You need look in the mirror to find the true problem not to this blog for a simple mistake. RSS