The Debate over Abortion in the Home of the Brave & the Land of the Free

Throughout the long history of this country, no woman of sound mind who wanted to carry her pregnancy to term has been forced under the law to end it.

The converse, however, has not always been true.

There are few issues in American politics that raise more heat than the dispute over abortion. Religious traditions play a part, since abortion is forbidden by most of them. But in America two other factors loom larger: Christian Dominionists wield the supposed sanctity of life like a club, as they do the supposed loss of prayer in schools, in their fight for theocracy; and cynical politicians find legal abortion a handy wedge issue to stir up their voting base. Racial tensions remain important, but the success of the civil rights movement has reduced their immediacy. Evangelical religion too has lost impact. Leaders of both factions have found abortion a useful motivator, and over four decades have built campaigns around it.

The dispute over abortion does not touch me directly — but it does touch the society I live in. Severe restrictions on abortion go hand in hand with lax restrictions on firearms, with resistance to public health measures and vilification of health-care workers, with the rejection of climate science and the promotion of fossil fuels, and with less tolerance generally. A society that accepts these features will be more divisive and far more expensive to live in.

The May 2022 leak of a draft version of Alito's ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization prompted me to create these pages. Originally they were one page; that page is still online. Soon I will be separating it into sections in the interests of readability and maintainability. The other isues I mention deserve coverage too; but in my judgement abortion is more urgent. I summed up my feelings at the end of the original page thus:

Tearing down Roe will call down the furies on America as hundreds of thousands of additional unwanted children are born and hospitals, social services, and adoption agencies — inadequately funded — struggle to keep up.

Some number of additional women will die or be maimed as a result of illegal abortions they seek out of desperation. We may not ever know their number. If they are poor, which they most likely will be, they won't have access to any legal recompense.

No other issue, in my opinion, would be more likely in the near term to trigger widespread violence
in this country.

To mark the first anniversary of the Dobbs decision, I'm posting an interim, abbreviated version of this header page. Here's where we are now: fourteen states have tightened restrictions on abortion, and 25 million women live under those restrictions. Here's more about where we are:

Remember how Alito predicted that returning abortion decisions to the states would end the bitterness over the question? Nope: wrong again.

To Open The Sky

The Dispute over Abortion in the Home of the Brave & Land of the Free