“We are prepared not only to create a legal landscape to protect life at the federal and state levels, but also to support a culture of living,” said Kristen Waggoner, general counsel of the Alliance Defending Freedom, who backs Mississippi’s 15-week ban that led to the Supreme Court case that could overturn Roe.
Proponents on the left see the leaked draft setting out a playbook for a sweeping attempt to roll back other established rights. “There are people on the right who say they’re just going back to the states when in fact it’s very clear that their agenda is much broader than that,” said Ms. Ford of NARAL. “It’s not just about abortion.”
The State of Roe v. Wade
What is Roe v. Wade? Roe v. Wade is a landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States. The 7-2 ruling was announced on January 22, 1973. Judge Harry A. Blackmun, a humble Midwestern Republican and advocate of abortion rights, wrote the majority opinion.
Criticism that such a decision could spark a cultural revolution, potentially disrupting precedent protection for other issues, including birth control and same-sex and interracial marriage, has been “hysteria and scaremongering,” Ms. Wagoner said.
Abortion uniquely has sustained support and energy, as evidenced by the annual March for Life, abortion opponents said.
Ms. Carroll, spokeswoman for Susan B. Anthony List, noted that there have been no sustained mass protests against other landmark Supreme Court rulings on issues such as interracial marriage and birth control.
The movement has long been loosely divided into incrementalists, mainstream groups such as the Susan B. Anthony List and the National Right to Life Committee, who for years focused on obtaining terrain limitation through limitation, and absolutists, who saw everything less than the total elimination of abortion as failure. This moment is a convergence of both, with the court considering reversing Roe, and states like Texas and Oklahoma effectively banning abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even realize they are pregnant.
Now, disagreements are emerging over the moral and practical benefits of strategies such as persecuting pregnant women and making state abortions illegal.
