Roe v. Wade Battleground

[chrisfan]

rockysigman said:

I did a google search to try to answer your question, Mary, and stumbled upon this:

www.crlp.org/pdf/bo_whatifroefell.pdf

It's something put together by the Center for Reproductive Rights that gives a state-by-state analysis of what would likely happen if Roe is overturned. So the answer should be in there. I've just started to peruse it.

Very interesting document. But I do thikn it has to be read with a bit of skepticism. If an organization that exsists to protect abortion rights were to publish a document saying "abortion is relatively safe, even without Roe" what would happen to their fund raising capabiliites?

[Kensterberg]

South Dakota only has about 700,000 people, spread out over a very large state. The biggest city is only about 100,000, the next about half that, and the rest dwindle quickly from there. BTW, those two big towns are at either end of the state. It's also a state that loses a lot of its young people to outward migration every year.

So the demographics don't support South Dakota having a lot of anything (except corn, soybeans, hogs, etc.). I think it's unfortunate that the few women in the state who do need an abortion provider have to look elsewhere. The result is that the option of even seriously considering an abortion is taken away from many poor women - especially those who live in the center of the state.

[rockysigman]

Well, the organization obviously has a pretty large political bent to it, but I think that that particular document was meant for those within the organization to know where to focus their efforts. In the states where abortion rights are obviously safe, they say so. In the places where abortion is obviously going to be outlawed if Roe is overturned, it says so. As for the states that could go either way, I suppose its possible that they may exaggerate the threat in order to keep up fundraising, but I think that that would distract efforts from the places where the group has the most work to do. Exaggerating the likelihood of abortion being outlawed could help them in fundraising, but I would imagine that they'd also be weary of too much being done in places that don't really need it and taking away from the real battlegrounds.

Even if the portraits painted in that document of each state are not 100% accurate, they should at least be a pretty good guage for comparison between states.

[chrisfan]

I agree that it is a good gauge. That's one of the reasons I said it's a very interesting document. I simply think that with an issue such as this, it makes sense to look for information from a variety of resources, and recognize the inevitable slant that each will have.

[shin]

Did anyone read that firedoglake post from the first page that I posted? I was hoping to have a conversation on its central point but it doesn't seem like anyone's read it so far...

[kmc]

What part of the blog are we supposed to read, shin?

[shin]

The post entitled "When Are We Gonna Ban In Vitro Fertilization?"

[Mary]

Thanks so much for posting that document, Rocky! It was a really interesting read (I mean, I didn't read the whole thing, but the parts I looked over!) and the analysis seems very compelling.

Pleasant surprise for me, personally - they think the risk of abortion rights disappearing in Tennessee after the (hypothetical) overturing of Roe are extremely slim. Tennessee repealed their pre-Roe abortion ban, and their Supreme Court has interpreted the State constitution, which has an explicit privacy protection clause, as protecting abortion rights.

Regarding Chrisfan's observation about South Dakota:

Either that, or else the demand is not there, therefore the clinics don't exsist.

To some extent this is true, I'm sure, but viewing the provision of abortions through such a market logic strikes me as problematic for a few reasons.

If you do believe that abortion is a fundamental right (if you don't, then this isn't an issue) then it would be unjust to allow its accessibility to vary according to the general levels of demand within the populace of a state. Even if it is only a distinct minority of women within South Dakota who want access to abortions, if this is really a fundamental right, then it's wrong for them to be deprived of that access just because, say, 90% of the women in South Dakota would never seek out an abortion. We don't allow the market to regulate the accessibility of fundamental rights.

Perhaps even more to the point, though, I'm not sure if the laws of supply and demand really work in repressive environments. If the general public culture of South Dakota is extremely hostile to abortions, and if women feel they would be ostracized or shamed if they sought out an abortion, then this could easily have the effect of causing women to shy away from getting an abortion, even to deny that they would want one, even if, in another, more tolerant state, they would in fact seek them out. So I'm skeptical that you can really measure demand from the lack of supply in an intolerant atmosphere.

Since I'm moving there soon, I was just reading about the gay community in Memphis. While it's a big enough city that there are more tolerant parts of town and there are a few gay bars an clubs, it also has a strong right-wing evangelical presence and apparently there is one influential Church in partcular which seeks to implement "gay conversion therapy". Memphis consistently ranks low - around 40th out of the 50 largest cities in the country - in terms of its acceptance of gays. As such, many gays are closeted, and don't make a lot of demands on the city. Would it be accurate to conclude that there's no demand in Memphis for gay-friendly services and businesses and neighborhoods? I don't thnk so - when people are scared into silence, the ordinary supply-and-demand market laws get warped. It's possible that a similar thing is happening in South Dakota.

Cheers,
M

[phil]

So Alta brings up the conundrum that's always guaranteed to set wingnut heads a-spinning and green pea soup spewing from their mouths, which is basically a riff on "if a fire breaks out in a fertility clinic, who do you save -- a Petri dish with five blastula or the two year-old child?" Suddenly everyone's yelling, Monica's mouth starts doing that other thing it does which is not a smile, and the whole show devolves into a split-screen talking head orgy of indignation. Nobody ever answers the question, by the way.

LoLoLoL !!

[Mary]

One more thought on the South Dakota law and its chances before the Supreme Court...

Presuming the Court did agree to hear the case - then as I said, all eyes would be on Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy has vote to uphold Roe before (he was one of the co-writers of Planned Parenthood v. Casey) but he has also been more sympathetic to various restrictions on abortion than O'Connor ever was. In Stenberg v. Carhart, the decision with overturned a partial-birth abortion ban because it provided no exception to protect the mother's health, Kennedy wrote a scathing dissent which caused some commentators to wonder if his faith in Roe itself wasn't beginning to waver.

From this perspective, I think the anti-Roe folks in South Dakota got a little too ambitious. Kennedy might be the vulnerable link, but I think he's going to balk at the stringency of this law - in particular, the fact that it makes abortion illegal even in cases of rape and incest. A 13 year old girl who is raped by her own father would be forced in South Dakota to carry the pregnancy to term. I know melon will show up at any minute to remind me that the rape & incest issue is blown out of all proportion because it accounts for a miniscule proportion of actual abortions, but that's beside the point here - I'm just trying to figure out how Kennedy will react to this law. And I think the lack of any rape and incest protection is going to bother him immensely, and might cause him to become even more hostile to the idea of overturning Roe than he ordinarily would be. If indeed this law gets its day before the Court, I think the pro-Roe counsel would be well-advised to harp incessantly on the rape and incest issue.

Cheers,
M

[phil]

I know melon will show up at any minute to remind me that the rape & incest issue is blown out of all proportion because it accounts for a miniscule proportion of actual abortions,

Late-term abortions also account for a minuscule proportion of actual abortions
and are done because something's wrong with the foetus or the pregnant woman
but it never stopped Melon from tearing his shirt to pieces over it ... !!

[rockysigman]

Beside the fact that, if pregnancy due to rape or incest is in fact so rare, then there is no harm in including a provision allowing for abortion in those instances...

[limitdeditionlayla]

melon1 said:

Less abortion = more idiots the world doesn't need.

Please, don't anybody try and tell me Layla didn't mean this. This is all the evidence needed to show that abortion rights advocates are akin to Nazis. To keep unwanted people from wandering around this country causing trouble, throw 'em in the trash can.

Firstly, how dare you assume that a remark made by one person is somehow indicative of the attitude of a number of people, on this forum or elsewhere. How fucking narrow-minded of you.

Secondly, if you think for a moment that I was being serious, that my belief in women being able to have the right to a choice stems from wanting to cull humans - well, thats just...give me some fucking credit.

really mister. Jumping to conclusions like that is quite silly. Someone should turn your laughter chip on because you seem too serious & dull.

[Galactus]

For pete's sake!

[limitdeditionlayla]

Pete, of Pete's sake, is pro-choice. Its true.