Frank's Musings

The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision has fomented a serious political conflict in the U.S.  Overturning it under the Constitution requires a variety of extremely difficult action plans: (1) election of  politically sympathetic controlling parties to two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the fifty state legislatures (and governors?) allowing the proposal and adoption of a Constitutional amendment; (2) the morbid strategy of anxiously awaiting changes in the membership of the Supreme Court, or in the Justices’ philosophies, that allows it to countermand the Dobbs decision and accept an Act  of Congress restoring the terms of the Roe v. Wade decision; or (3) the election of abortion-favorable majorities in all  the state legislatures and governorships.  Therefore, the promise of a 2024 Presidential election candidate to “sign into law” a Congressional bill that restores Roe v. Wade holds little weight.

In the meantime, the tragic deaths cited by that candidate were inevitable consequences of the barriers to reproductive health care erected by the Dobbs decision.  There have probably been and there surely will be others.  Moreover, before the Roe v. Wade decision more than fifty years ago, such tragedies were probably common.  The ideologue who’s running for VP on the Republican ticket would probably say, “That’s life.”  I await his debate performance next month to see how he rationalizes that sentiment.