The overturning of Roe v. Wade has produced a three results I did not see coming:

First:

The Trump campaign announced this week that it opposes any federal role in regulating abortion and that the issue should be decided by the states. The leaders of the most influential pro-life groups have condemned the announcement. The Susan B. Anthony List stated that “We will oppose any presidential candidate who refuses to embrace at a minimum a 15-week national standard” and called Trump’s position “unacceptable.” Lila Rose of Live Action stated that Trump had “disqualified” himself for the nomination. Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America concurred.

Jonathon Van Maren an First Things.

I’m not sure I agree that these three are “the most influential pro-life groups,” but they’re not obscure, either.

I would warm to the idea of a 15-week non-preemptive national ban if the proponents could tell me what provision(s) in the Constitution make abortion an issue for the national government rather than the states. I’ve said and believed for 40 years that reversing Roe would return the abortion issue to the states, because I actually support the 10th Amendment. I contemn emotivist arguments for circumventing it on selected issues.

I no longer read much about the abortion issue, having all the knowledge and principle I need to guide my retired life. But I suspect that these spokesmen (yes, I noticed that they’re women) would cite Sections 1 and 5 of the 14th Amendment as authority:

1. … nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

If you noticed that invoking Section 1 would imply fetal personhood and thus support an outright national abortion ban, bonus points to you. I suspect the spokesman know that full well.

The theory that this part of section 1 applies to the unborn — as a matter of the intentions of those who wrote and ratified it — has been around for most of the forty years I’ve paid attention to abortion law, and I’ve never quite bought it.

Second, the reversal of Roe sent red states off to the races to enact surprisingly restrictive abortion laws. I always knew that some blue states would declare perpetual open season on the unborn (and they have), but I did not expect red states not even to recognize life-of-the-mother exceptions.

I don’t think this would have happened fifteen years ago, but our polarization is extreme and so are the consequences.

Third, the reversal of Roe has brought sharpness of focus to an important distinction between two kinds of Roe opponents:

1. The Constitutionalists who considered Roe a judicial usurpation;
2. The “we must save babies by all possible means” true believers (for lack of a better term).

For better or worse, I’ve mostly theorized my Roe opposition the first way, and that hasn’t changed since Dobbs reshuffled the deck. This probably is a reflection of my legal training and my even longer-standing interest in Constitutional law.

“Mostly” doesn’t mean I don’t support policies and institutions that make childbirth more desirable and feasible than abortion. It also doesn’t mean that I don’t support fairly tight state-enacted restrictions. I do, times two.

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For all its piety and fervor, today’s United States needs to be recognized for what it really is: not a Christian country, but a nation of heretics.

Ross Douthat, Bad Religion

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