Roe v Wade Overturned. Now What?

Democracy can be pretty shitty sometimes.

I have waited to comment on the overturning of Roe v Wade by the US Supreme Court because I’m not really sure what to say. It’s a huge step backward for women’s rights, undoubtedly. It’s also something anyone paying attention saw coming years ago. In 2016, when Trump won the election, the writing was already on the wall. It was only a matter of time.

While the left has bickered and argued over identity politics and pronouns, the right has steadily gained actual, real power across all levels of government and this is what we have to show for it. Feckless, aimless attempts to radicalize the left in the most politically ineffectual way possible have done nothing at all to stop the GOP from gaining ground in big, meaningful—and frankly somewhat terrifying—ways.

This is one thing that Republican strategists do very well. They have taken over state legislatures all across the country. However much Trump may have irked the Republican establishment, he served one very important purpose: Seating three conservative justices on the Supreme Court and tilting the balance to a 6 to 3 conservative majority.

This will have far-reaching implications well into the future. While I doubt that the court will roll back gay marriage, I do think liberals have plenty to be concerned about. At the same time, I think it’s important to remember that overturning Roe v Wade is also a win for democracy, putting the issue of abortion into the hands of voters on the state level.

I realize this means that rights have been scaled back in a big way for many people around the country (women, specifically, but this will impact all people regardless of gender in the long run). But it does mean that the issue of abortion is now up to voters to decide and that means that political action can make a difference—in one direction or another.

Protests are fine and good, but voting and working to change hearts and minds is where the real money is. In the states with the most restrictive bans, I believe change is absolutely possible. But don’t expect anything as liberal as Roe v Wade in the deep South or in any Red states. Moderates may not want full-on bans, but many will want limits. The real work of liberalizing abortion laws will take place in the realm of compromise. What will the exceptions be? How many weeks will abortion be legal up to? And can we change our opponents’ minds if we only demonize and alienate them?

European leaders have come out in solidarity with Americans dismayed over the court’s decision, but it’s important to remember that most European countries have far more restrictive abortion laws than the US did under Roe. Virtually every country in the world that allows abortion has gestational limits. In France, that’s 16 weeks. In Portugal, ten weeks. In Spain, 14 weeks. In Austria, 90 days. In the UK a doctor must determine that physical or mental harm would occur if the woman were to bring the pregnancy to term. Ireland only recently liberalized its abortion laws. New Zealand allows abortions up to 20 weeks. It varies a great deal, but almost no countries allow on-demand abortions for the duration of the pregnancy. (Very few countries have no gestational limits outside of China and North Korea).

And this is what the US will now have to determine on a state-by-state basis. Voters will have to show up at the polls to exert their influence, electing state legislatures and governors who will enact changes. Democracy is a lot of hard work and it’s very messy but this is the way forward. The Supreme Court has overturned the law and even if Democrats retain power in the Oval Office and somehow take both the House and Senate, it will be many, many years before the court shifts again. Unless the court is expanded beyond nine justices, we will be stuck with a right-leaning SCOTUS for the foreseeable future, until we are all much older and greyer. And John Roberts is no longer a swing vote in any meaningful way, even if he wanted to be.

This is good news for conservatives and bad news for liberals and perhaps a wake-up call for the left. The left has been foisting a political agenda on the country that are unpopular and divisive. Radical gender and race politics are not unifying outside of media, academia and Twitter. A coalition of academics, journalists and social justice warriors who display virtually no empathy for working class people (who are generally much more conservative), who come largely from the upper class, who talk endlessly about privilege without acknowledging their own, is not a winning coalition. We’ve become distracted by a lot of people showboating on Twitter rather than fighting the real war, which is and always has been about class.

And yes, people will point fingers at Bernie supporters and others who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton. I voted for HRC because I knew that a Trump win would mean a tectonic shift in the courts and that this would not merely last four years but rather thrust the country to the right for decades to come. But I held my nose doing it and I’m still angry at the sheer arrogance of the Democratic party in thinking that someone so utterly unpopular with such a massive chunk of the country was the right choice—simply because she was the anointed “next in line.” Hillary’s strategy—calling out “deplorables” and ignoring the working class white vote—was as shitty as the candidate herself.

But blame does very little good at this stage. now is the time for hard work. The hard, thankless work of politics. Not screeching at one another on Twitter. Not ganging up on the latest heretic in an effort to ‘cancel’ them while also claiming that ‘cancel culture’ doesn’t exist. Not treating political ideas like foregone conclusions that simply must be right, that your opponents simply must accept just because. That isn’t how politics works.

You must fight, tooth and nail, simply to start the process of changing hearts and minds. Convincing people that your vision of justice, that your vision of the world itself, is better than the other. You have to sell your ideas to a reluctant, even hostile, electorate. Your echo chambers, your obscure ideas, your complicated language, your bizarre obsession with micro-aggressions and censorship and preventing abstract ‘harm’—must go. It is only in the real world, where real people exist, that true change can happen.

P.S. I try not to judge anyone for having an opinion different from my own on this subject. I know that many people are ‘pro-life’ because of their religious beliefs, and I respect people of faith who have a different view of this than myself. I do not think that everyone who is opposed to abortion is secretly just trying to control women (though I think there are those people also). Frankly, this is a very tricky subject. I can understand both sides when they try to define when a human life begins, and while I certainly do think that life is life and that a fetus is alive, I’m fundamentally a pragmatist.

I believe that having a choice about carrying a pregnancy to term is better than being told what to do by the state. We will see more black market abortions now, more women put at risk, more unwanted children. I hope that moderates win out in the end and that reasonable solutions are found that maybe don’t go as far as Roe v Wade but that still allow for abortion earlier in the pregnancy. I think that ultimately, whether you’re pro-life or pro-choice, the goal should be education, contraception and reducing unwanted pregnancies in the first place. If we could wipe out abortion that way, rather than through oppressive laws, we would be all be better off.