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The political machine that took down Roe v. Wade
50 years ago, when the Supreme Court granted the constitutional right to abortion, the country was far less divided than is it today. Now with that Roe v. Wade decision overturned, roughly half the states have "trigger laws" on the books restricting abortion, New York Times columnist Emily Bazelon tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
From a constitutional perspective, Bazelon says that abortion decisions today depend "on what you think of the idea that abortion is fundamental to women's liberty and equality" — a hard sell for what she calls a "maximalist" conservative majority on the court.
Bazelon adds that access to abortion pills is going to turn into a big legal battle. The Justice Department is working to ensure states can't ban abortion pills, which are federally approved, but Congress (as a whole) will be a tough sell.
But much of the rest of the world has been moving in the opposite direction. Largely Catholic countries in Latin America and Europe have legalized abortion, while African nations have rolled back or are rethinking colonial-era abortion bans. Regardless, the SCOTUS ruling will make waves around the world.
US Supreme Court fights: why ending Roe is only the beginning
The US is now a much more divided country than it was almost 50 years ago, when the Supreme Court granted the constitutional right to abortion — recently overturned by the court.
Interestingly, most of the rest of the world is moving in the opposite direction, including in majority-Catholic countries. But striking down Roe v. Wade will surely have a bigger impact on US politics.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer speaks to New York Times columnist Emily Bazelon, who knows a thing or two about this ultra-divisive issue because she's also a senior research fellow at Yale Law School.
Just hours after the bombshell ruling dropped on June 24, Bazelon reacted to it by analyzing what abortion rights will look like soon across different US states; why SCOTUS upheld the constitutional right to carry guns but not to get an abortion; the next steps by the Biden administration and Congress; and why the battle over abortion pills is likely headed to the same court that got rid of Roe.
Bonus: Wanna get an abortion in Missouri? It'll be a long drive, and you may get sued.
Abortion pills likely headed to Supreme Court, says NYT Mag columnist Emily Bazelon
The issue of abortion pills could soon be taken up by the Supreme Court, New York Times Columnist Emily Bazelon told Ian Bremmer on GZERO World. This comes despite Attorney General Merrick Garland’s announcement that the pills could not be banned by states because of their FDA status.
“That's a pretty basic principle [that] federal regulation gets to trump essentially state regulation,” she said. However, she issued a warning about how the court’s handling of the issue could play out: “Sometimes when rules seem like they generally apply, they can look different in the context of abortion, especially with this conservative court.”
After 50 years of precedent, Bazelon argued that pro-life groups including the Federalist Society have worked for decades to overturn Roe V Wade, while liberals were more complacent and assumed the constitutional right to an abortion was safe.
“You wonder whether the people who care the most are going to triumph in the end,” she added.
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US Supreme Court upends Roe v. Wade
The justices have spoken. After weeks of speculation following the leak of a draft opinion in early May, the highest court in the land has reversed the landmark Roe vs. Wade ruling that had legalized abortion in 1973.
“The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,” the decision read.
Background. The Supreme Court ruling is the culmination of a decades-long project by the Republican Party and conservative lobbyists to undo Roe and its affirmation in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey case, which said that states cannot enforce laws that place an “undue burden” on women seeking abortions.
Why now? After Mississippi enacted a law banning abortions in most cases in 2018, the state’s sole remaining abortion clinic took the case to court, saying it violated the premise of Roe v. Wade. The initial ban was blocked by a federal judge before reaching the Supreme Court.
Trump’s court. The conservative majority that overturned the half-century-old precedent on abortion law will be one of Trump’s most enduring legacies. On the campaign trail in 2015 – and hoping to woo Evangelical voters – Donald Trump vowed to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe. Unsurprisingly, all three of Trump’s conservative appointees – Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett – voted in favor of gutting the law.
The ruling will now kick off an ugly battle within states over abortion rights. While women living in Democratic states – including New York, California, and Illinois – will continue to have access to safe and legal abortions, women in the South and Midwest could have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to terminate pregnancies. Burdened by financial and family commitments, many women won’t be able to afford to take time off work to travel over state lines for the procedure – a process that can take several days due to onerous state laws.
Already, 13 states have “trigger laws” on the books that will outlaw abortions almost immediately. And the procedure is likely to be outlawed in another dozen states in the near term, pending ongoing legal proceedings.
The regional picture. The timing is remarkable considering that many countries in the Americas – home to some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world due to the pervasive influence of the Catholic Church – have dramatically liberalized their abortion laws.
The Marea Verde (Green Wave) that swept Latin America in recent years renewed calls for the enhancement of sexual and reproductive freedoms, and the strategy of mass mobilization worked. In Argentina, abortion was legalized in December 2020, marking the first time that women in that country could legally terminate their pregnancies in over a century. Similarly, Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized the procedure last fall, giving rise to a host of legal shifts across states, a move recently followed by Colombia's Constitutional Court.
That Green Wave was inspired by Roe, which is now in the past.
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Victory for US conservatives: Roe v. Wade overturned by SCOTUS
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, shares his perspective on US politics:
What will be the immediate impact of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade?
This week's decision is the culmination of 40 years of work by the conservative legal movement to create the alignment of justices willing to make this choice, which ironically came together during the presidency of Donald Trump, who, for most of his career, was not a conservative Republican. Abortion could become a relevant issue in the midterm elections, but surveys are showing that most voters are much more activated by the economy at the moment than abortion. That could change however as there's going to be a movement in states to either deny or preserve access to abortion, which could put the issue on the ballot in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia.
Several Republican controlled states have already banned abortion outright. This is a position supported by only about 20% of respondents in public opinion polling. Typically, you'd expect overtime to see backlash against these bans and a potential moderation in swing states with a new standard that allows abortion up until about the end of the first trimester in line with public opinion. However, this has not been the case in Texas, the first state to push a very aggressive limit. There, the Republican legislative majority is probably safe despite this ban and Governor Greg Abbott is preparing to cruise to reelection and for a presidential run on his conservative record, suggesting the abortion issue certainly activates voters on both sides.
Expect there to be ongoing violence coming out of this. Some 30 pro-life pregnancy counseling centers have already been attacked since the leak happened and there was a barely thwarted attempt on the life of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Roe was a deeply polarizing decision at the time it was made. Perhaps one of the most important flashpoints in the cultural and political realignment that happened in the 1970s and '80s. And since that time, the court has made decisions in a wide range of social policy issues that have taken power away from the states to regulate private behavior and affect guaranteeing various individual rights that are not explicitly cited in the Constitution. This trend is now starting to reverse. The court this term is going to make several monumental decisions that will fundamentally upend decades of precedent on business regulation, guns and now, abortion. With other decisions this week on guns and state support for religious schools, liberals are starting to see the court the same way conservatives have seen it for decades, as a quasi-legislative body that is making policy decisions in the absence of Congressional action.
At the same time, you're seeing public opinion polling show a drop in perceived legitimacy of the court, part of a broader anti-establishment trend where voters are expressing a lack of faith in all big institutions.
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Roe v. Wade has been overturned. What does it mean for the country?
Roe v. Wade has been overturned. What does it mean for the country?
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled on Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that enshrined abortion as a federal constitutional right.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” the decision penned by Justice Samuel Alito in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overrule precedent and uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban reads. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
Four other conservative justices—Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas—voted with Alito to overturn Roe, while all Democratic-appointed justices—Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer—plus Chief Justice John Roberts dissented.
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The ruling in Dobbs shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. Abortion up until fetal viability (now around 23 weeks of pregnancy) has been legal in the entire United States for nearly 50 years, first established in Roe and reaffirmed in 1992 by Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Since then, however, opponents of legal abortion have been diligently working to reverse these decisions, spending billions to lobby for anti-abortion policies, elect anti-abortion candidates, and appoint anti-abortion judges.
Their efforts paid off: the Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority, federal courts are packed with conservative judges, and Republican states have passed a slew of laws curtailing abortion rights. While for years SCOTUS had sidestepped the issue of Roe’s constitutionality despite numerous challenges, abortion opponents got a major win in December 2021 when Texas’s so-called “heartbeat” act outlawing abortion after 6 weeks of pregnancy (enforced by private individuals through civil lawsuits rather than by state officials) was allowed to stand by the highest court. At the time, many legal analysts warned this decision signaled that the end of Roe was near. They were right.
Where Americans stand on abortion
It depends on the question you ask. Polls show the vast majority of Americans (90%) believe abortion should be legal in some circumstances and illegal in others. That includes majorities of both Democrats (65%) and Republicans (79%). Six-in-ten Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 37% believe it should be illegal in all or most cases. Fewer than one-in-ten Americans think abortion should always be illegal, while 19% say it should be legal in every case without exception.
In Republican-leaning states, especially in the South and Midwest, support for abortion is low. Women and younger Americans are more likely to support legal abortion. Notably, nearly half (47%) of Republicans under 30 say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Most Americans believe abortion should be legal in the first trimester of pregnancy—which in 2019 comprised 93% of all abortions—after which opposition to abortion rises significantly among even supporters of legal abortion. (Roe legalized abortion up until fetal viability, which is currently around 23 weeks, or well into the second trimester.) And most Americans, including majorities of Democrats and Republicans, say abortion should be legal if the pregnancy threatens the mother’s life or if it’s a result of rape.
Many Americans hold seemingly contradictory views about the issue. For instance, about one-third say that “the decision about whether to have an abortion should belong solely to the pregnant woman” at the same time as they believe that “human life begins at conception, so a fetus is a person with rights.” Among supporters of abortion rights, one-third believe life begins at conception (33%), while a majority believe the timing of abortion should matter in determining its legality (56%). Meanwhile, 41% of those who oppose abortion rights say pregnant women should have some or all the power to decide whether to have an abortion.
The consequences of reversing Roe
For starters, abortion access will be drastically curtailed across large swaths of the nation, especially in the South and Midwest. Because individual states will be allowed to decide whether to protect, restrict, or ban abortion, the implications will be radically different in red and blue parts of the country.
In anticipation of the ruling, many Republican states have spent the last few months passing anti-abortion laws due to come into force as soon as Roe is overturned. For their part, Democratic states have been preemptively enshrining abortion protections in state law. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 13 states already have “trigger laws” on the books that would automatically and immediately outlaw abortion, while another 13 states are likely to heavily restrict or ban the procedure in short order. These 26 states are home to more than half of all women of reproductive age in the United States, nearly all of whom came of age while abortion was legal nationwide.
Studies show that abortion bans don’t reduce the incidence of abortion. Instead, abortions simply become more dangerous for women. According to the World Health Organization, 23,000 women die globally each year from unsafe abortions and tens of thousands more suffer significant health complications. Banning abortion will also lead to an increase in the number of pregnancy-related deaths, as carrying a fetus to term is often lethal for women. The maternal mortality rate in America is two times higher than in any other industrialized country.
Abortion restrictions disproportionately affect poor women and women of color, who account for nearly half of all abortions and experience much higher rates of maternal mortality and morbidity.
Abortion a tailwind for Dems, but GOP still likely to take Congress
Politically, the Dobbs decision could work to the Democrats’ advantage, even if only marginally.
The fact is that most Americans (66%) don’t want to see Roe overturned and are out of step with the policies being enacted by many Republican states. Facing an unpopular incumbent who is seen as weak on the economy, immigration, crime, and cultural issues, Republicans would much prefer to run in opposition to Biden’s policies without having to offer any of their own. That’s why the Republican Party has thus far downplayed the issue, instead choosing to focus on the leak. But Dobbs will inevitably put abortion, one of the least popular issues for them, directly in the electoral spotlight.
No longer shielded by Roe from having to legislate on the issue, Republicans in swing states will be pressured by the far-right to enact abortions policies that are too extreme for much of the GOP base and independents, risking a backlash that potentially depresses turnout and pushes moderates to vote for Democrats. It’s equivalent to what Democrats did when they let their party get captured by the loud few on wokeism, transgender policies, and critical race theory: they overreached and got punished for it. Republicans could well suffer the same fate.
For the midterms, the key variable is turnout. Surveys show that voters overwhelmingly care about the economy, an area where Republicans are strongly favored. Presumably, most people who are animated by abortion were already likely to vote in November. However, polling data released after the leak suggests abortion could energize Democrats more than Republicans, especially young progressives and women who had soured on President Biden and weren’t motivated to vote.
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