If the Supreme Court votes to overhaul abortion laws it would fulfil a Trump campaign promise, at the cost of women's freedoms
legislature gets its way, abortion will soon become illegal there. A doctor convicted of performing an abortion could be sentenced to up to 99 years in prison. With no exemptions in cases of rape or incest, this would be the most restrictive such law in the country. But other states with Republican-controlled legislatures have passed “heartbeat” laws that are almost as absolute—they ban abortion from 6 weeks, at which point many women do not yet realise they are pregnant.
Compared with other Western countries, America is not such an outlier on abortion as it sometimes appears. The number of abortions is, thankfully, in long-term decline as the number of teenage pregnancies falls.
Alabama illustrates how this happens. As in many other states, the only political competition most Republican members of Alabama’s statehouse face is during primaries and comes from the right. In these races there is no political cost, and considerable advantage, in taking the most extreme position possible on abortion. Thus a fringe idea becomes a litmus test for primary candidates, handing power to a small but highly motivated group of cranks.
Whatever the fate of the new abortion laws in the courts, this cycle looks likely to become more destructive. If the five conservative justices voted to overhaul abortion law in a way that contradicted public opinion, then Donald Trump would have fulfilled a campaign promise to appoint justices who will overturn, but at the cost of women’s freedoms and of the further politicisation of America’s highest court.
The only way to stop this cycle is for lawmakers to compromise on what most Americans think reasonable. That looks unlikely now. But in democracies problems often look insoluble—until, suddenly, something changes."Supremely wrong"
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