So, as expected, the US Supreme Court judgement from the early seventies that guaranteed a right to abortion has been struck down by the current Supreme Court. This is something that has been on the cards for a few years now, not merely because there are now more conservative justices who take a constitutional originalism view siting on the court, but also because the original Roe vs Wade judgement was increasingly seen as a poor one.

There is and never was a constitutional right to abortion in the USA. The Roe vs Wade case was based on stretching the meaning of the constitution and of constitutional amendments to the extreme limit. In any event this sort of decision was not one for the court as it is a legislative issue not a legal interpretation one. Making rather than interpreting law is not the job of the Supreme Court of the United States, that duty falls on either the US Congress and Senate or the legislatures of the individual 50 states.

I’m pleased that Roe vs Wade is gone. I think that not because I’m a rabid anti-abortionist (although since becoming a parent I’m less liberal about this issue than I once was), I still believe that abortion should be safe, legal, rare and subject to reasonable time limits within a pregnancy, but because Roe vs Wade was a legal mess.

This mess could have been sorted out at any time since the original Roe vs Wade judgement in 1973 by Congress passing legislation that guaranteed a legal right to abortion and set reasonable term limits within a pregnancy for an abortion to be carried out. There were times since the Roe vs Wade judgement, when the Democrat party, the party most closely associated with a pro-abortion viewpoint controlled both the House of Representatives and the Senate when a permissive abortion law could have been successfully piloted through Congress but this did not happen. This may have been because the politicians thought that they wanted to leave such a hot potato issue alone but it may also have been because for some Democrats the Roe vs Wade judgement was a scab that could continually be picked in order to get the pro-choice vote out. Having a subject like abortion continually hanging in the balance was a powerful way of getting those who are pro-choice to vote Democrat, in a similar way to how the Labour Party in the United Kingdom uses the National Health Service and the perceived threat to it from the Tories, as a way of getting the Labour vote out.

The issue of abortion in the United States will now go back to the individual States where Americans can decide democratically what to do with this divisive and emotive issue. Some states will of course decide to restrict or even ban abortion altogether whilst other States will no doubt take a much more liberal and permissive view of this issue. Whatever my own personal views on this issue, I believe that it is much better for the people using democratic means to decide on this matter and decide it according to their own local State culture and viewpoint, than for this matter be decided by unelected Judges. If the right to abortion is supported by a majority in places like Texas then Texans can vote for candidates whether they be Republican, Democrat or Independent, who promise to allow abortion. Voters in such places can also choose to vote to restrict abortion if they so choose.

Roe vs Wade has been a festering boil in American politics for decades with some enthusiastically supporting the 1973 judgement and all that it entails and others being vehemently opposed to it. The overturning of Roe vs Wade lances this massive boil and returns this matter to the individual States which legally is most likely where it needs to be.

The matter of abortion is now a political rather than a legal matter and it will be extremely interesting to see how this plays with regards to this year’s Mid Term elections and in the 2024 Presidential Election. Will it have any influence or will it not? Will pro-abortion parties and candidates promise in manifestos to bring in laws that grant a legal right to abortion or not? This judgement will make an already interesting Mid Term election contest even more interesting.