Kendall Stanley: The end of Roe?

The stunning arrival of a leaked draft of a ruling that will likely end Roe v. Wade will certainly keep pro- and anti-abortion activists busy for years to come.

The apparent 5-4 decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, basically lays out that Roe was a fatally flawed decision and outlines over the course of dozens of pages the fact that nowhere in the Constitution can you find any mention of abortion.

Since the appearance of the draft Congressional Republicans have been all in a twit, not because Roe seems destined to be ruled unconstitutional but because the draft opinion was leaked.

For some legislators it is like the dog chasing the car – we’ve eliminated Roe after seeking that goal for decades and now what? So let us not talk of the elimination of Roe v. Wade, lets talk about leaks at the Supreme Court! That ought to take people’s minds off the elimination of what many assumed was a forever constitutional right.

Those who thought Roe was divisive over all these past 49 years haven’t seen anything yet.

States are now scrambling to find ways to keep abortion legal, after a majority of red states continue to try to ban most abortions outright.

Pro-choice advocates were planning a vote in the Senate this week on a bill that has passed the House that would codify abortion rights in the U.S.

The chances of that passing in the 50-50 split Senate was nil.

And while the Dems try to push through their “extreme” abortion bill as Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell put it, the GOP hasn’t decided what to do at this point except leave it to the states. You can bet your bottom dollar, however, that if Republicans take the House, Senate and White House in 2024 that in early 2025 there will be a national abortion ban introduced, passed and signed into law by the president.

The way it is looking now is the Supreme Court will overturn Roe, anti-abortion states will tighten up their regulations, pro-choice states will adjust their laws and chaos will rule the land.

We’ve already had some states indicate they will pass laws that make it illegal for their state’s women to go to other states for abortions or to ban the importation of pills for medication abortions. Last time I checked citizens of this country were free to cross state lines.

And don’t be surprised if some states outlaw some forms of birth control. Don’t think that will happen? When Roe v. Wade was decided, it was based in part on the right to privacy granted in a previous ruling concerning – you guessed it – birth control!

Justice Alito’s suggesting that abortion wasn’t mentioned when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution didn’t mean that other rulings would be affected if Roe is overturned.

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Sorry, but it won’t take more than a blink of an eye for some state to jump at the opportunity to ban same-sex marriage, arguing that nothing in the Constitution from the Founding Fathers allowed for that.

Anti-abortion activists have suggested the demise of Roe will be a huge opportunity for democracy. Let the people decide what they want to do with abortion laws! If the people of Mississippi want no abortions, fine! If Illinois is good with abortions, fine!

In reality it turns every state into a battleground and in some cases pits state against state in terms of who is let in for an abortion or who is prohibited from leaving their state to receive one.

If the past couple of weeks have shown us anything it’s that simply overturning Roe v. Wade will not return us to the early 1970s in regard to abortion.

The fighting will just keep going on and on …

Caution work ahead!

OK, I knew the city was rebuilding East Lake Street from Division to Kalamazoo. What I didn’t know is that being in the middle of a construction zone is not necessarily the place to be!

Although the work on our part of the street won’t start until the middle of summer, when we arrived home from Arizona all kinds of construction materials were spread up and down our block and the next one as well.

Grates, manholes, lots and lots of piping – you name it was there.

We really can’t complain about the work, the street has needed repairs for years. Many of the houses have a patch on the street in front of their house where the city has replaced water lines from the main to the meter.

The curb along some stretches is missing entirely, long tossed up on lawns by snowplows.

To top it off, our neighbors across the street are adding onto their house, giving us an up-close look of modern construction.

All. Summer. Long.

— Kendall P. Stanley is retired editor of the News-Review. He can be contacted at kendallstanley@charter.net. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily of the Petoskey News-Review or its employees.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Kendall Stanley: The end of Roe?