It didn’t take long after the Governor of South Dakota signed that state’s criminal ban on nearly all abortions for other states to move in the same direction. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Governor of Mississippi chimed in with his eagerness to do the same, and that eight other states are considering similar steps. Among these are Ohio, Michigan and Missouri. According to the WSJ, “Those state officials, like conservative activist groups, are emboldened by a rightward shift throughout the federal bench during the Bush administration. As a result, they show increasing willingness to test the staying power of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe [v. Wade] decision, which placed abortion rights within the Constitution’s privacy protections.”
The Journal continues by noting that the reversal of Roe would “clear the way for a state-by-state battle over whether, and under what circumstances, abortion could remain legal.” True enough -- but it could be even worse. The Journal says “Six states, including California, have codified Roe, essentially guaranteeing the right to abortion even if Roe is overturned.” That is not correct, sadly. If Roe were overturned, Congress could pass and the President could sign a federal abortion ban that would override the laws in those states. So it would be a mistake for women even in those states – or with the resources to travel to those states to escape their own state’s abortion bans -- to feel sanguine about their rights.
