Is it time for Roe vs. Wade to go away? Then the debate over abortion would begin

Katha Pollitt

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But, of course, if the Supreme Court overturned Roe, abortion would not be off the table at all. It would be front and center in 50 state legislatures.
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"Overnight," writes Susan Estrich in a recent syndicated column, "every election, for every state office, would become a referendum not on parental consent or partial birth abortion, but on whether regular old middle-class adult women could get first-trimester abortions. When you think about it that way, you have to ask, 'What could be better for Democrats?'."

Estrich rejects the thought, because, something the boy pundits forget, criminalizing abortion, however briefly, means many, many women would suffer atrociously.
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If Roe goes, whoever has political power will determine the most basic, intimate, life-changing and life-threatening decision women -- and only women -- confront. We will have a country in which the same legislature that can't prevent some clod from burning a flag will be able to force a woman to bear a child under whatever circumstances it sees fit. It is hard to imagine how that woman would be a free or equal citizen of our constitutional republic.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/24/INGFEDR2TU1.DTL