Abortion won't end ... ever!
Anyone who can predict how the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on a sweeping abortion law that could end Roe v. Wade is piddling into the wind. He or she cannot possibly make that prediction with any knowledge base.
However, I can predict what will happen to the act of abortion if the SCOTUS overturns the landmark ruling that made it legal. It won’t end the heart-wrenching decision that women will make to terminate their pregnancy. Justices heard this past week from lawyers involved in a case that would determine whether to uphold a Mississippi law that ends pregnancies after 15 weeks.
Therein lies what might be the most troubling consequence of what can happen if the high court determines that Roe no longer is on the books, that states will be free to criminalize an act that belongs only in the hearts of women, their partners, their clergy and their physicians.
Any decision to allow states to make such a decision a crime only will worsen the consequence for women who will do what they believe they must do.
Texas legislators and our governor, Greg Abbott, already have determined that abortion can occur only at the six-week mark — or earlier — of a pregnancy; indeed, women generally don’t even know they are pregnant until later than that. What’s more, the newly enacted Texas law makes no exception for women who are impregnated by a rapist or during an incestuous act.
I am shuddering at the thought of what women will be forced to do when they no longer can obtain an abortion, which once was considered a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Well, such a principle is still on the books.
For now!