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Overturn Roe v. Wade, Then What?
If/When Roe v. Wade is overturned, what can we expect?
Disclaimer: Predictions on what comes next are not (all) my own. My attempt and hope for this piece was gathering a wide-range of ideas, thoughts, readings, and interpretations into a succinct overview on what it could mean to overturn Roe v. Wade . . .
Introduction/Foundation:
Roe v. Wade is described and known as the landmark US Supreme Court decision that guaranteed the right to an abortion.
Prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion in the US had been a fact of life, it was something that happened, not disputed or regulated in the way we understand it today; eventually, it did turn into a patchwork of legal rules and regulations, though, to be clear, these regulations were not born out of a moral-impetus, but (male) doctors’ desire to dominate and control the reproductive healthcare market, and this desire to dominate and control was palpable, and heeded, thanks to sexist, racist, and xenophobic sentiments.
Essentially, abortion was not always a contentious issue; stark conflict around abortion, and hostility towards abortion, was created, and eventually evolved through cycles of debate into the highly-contentious, volatile issue it is today.
Nevertheless, more than a century after political, social, and legal attacks were set into motion, abortion was largely illegal. It was not a federally protected right; Roe v. Wade changed that — it ruled abortion was a Constitutionally-protected right that could not be subject to “excessive governmental intrusion”.
In the time since Roe v. Wade “excessive governmental intrusion” and “undue burden” has been debated, pushed, and reinterpreted, as some states placed increasing restrictions on the availability and accessibility of abortion-care.
Now, in the first week of May 2022, in one such case and debate on restrictions, a draft opinion of the US Supreme Court case (Dobbs v. Jackson Health Organization) was leaked. This leak effectively demonstrated the Court’s intention to overturn Roe v. Wade. The outrage, the fear, the celebration, the commentary, has exploded from every angle.
For right now, for this written piece, let’s cast aside theories on how it was leaked, or why it was…
