[Mb-civic] Is Roe v. Wade already collapsing? - Ellen Goodman -
Boston Globe Op-Ed
William Swiggard
swiggard at comcast.net
Fri Jan 13 04:07:26 PST 2006
Is Roe v. Wade already collapsing?
By Ellen Goodman | January 13, 2006 | The Boston Globe
SIOUX FALLS, S.D.
TO KNOW what's at stake in the Supreme Court confirmation hearings, it's
best to travel 1,200 miles west from the paneled Senate room to a small
nondescript clinic in a Great Plains state.
It's best to turn from the blue-and-white charts brandished by senators
to the parking lot filled with cars from places as far away as Rapid
City or even Wyoming. It's best to turn from the buzz about precedents
and privacy to the quiet of a waiting room.
Here, late in the afternoon, the clinic is still full. There's a soldier
who will make a 700-mile round trip from the western part of the state.
There's a teenager slouching beside a tense mother. There's a rancher, a
mother of two high-schoolers and pregnant after having an IUD removed.
This is the only clinic in the state and this is the only day in the
week when a woman can get an abortion in South Dakota. Today, they'll be
treated by one of four doctors flown in from Minneapolis because it's
impossible to recruit locally. Today's doctor is Miriam McCreary, a
mother of four and grandmother of nine, who graduated from medical
school in 1958. At 70, she still knows ''how desperate women are to end
their pregnancies."
One clinic, one day, one doctor. This is what it's like in South Dakota
right now under Roe v. Wade. It's also like this in North Dakota and
Mississippi, and not very different in Arkansas or a dozen other states.
Antiabortion lobbyists here boast that South Dakota is the legislative
laboratory for testing and imposing state restrictions. Last year, five
new restrictions passed, including one, now being challenged, to force
doctors to recite a state-written speech saying that abortion ends the
life of ''a whole, separate, unique living human being." This year, the
Legislature, which just opened its 35-day session, is being pressed by a
state task force to add more mis-informed consent, more delays, more
expensive barriers.
It goes without saying that South Dakota is one of seven states with a
''trigger law" ready to ban abortion if Roe is overturned. But something
else requires saying: It's possible to add so many burdens onto the back
of Roe that it collapses without ever being overturned.
Kate Looby, the thoughtful and energetic state director for Planned
Parenthood, puts it simply: Even if Roe is saved, ''we'll end up living
in a country in which women theoretically have legalized, safe abortion.
But for the women of South Dakota, that won't mean anything." She has
had to imagine moving this last clinic over to Minnesota.
Here then is the lens through which to watch the Alito hearings. Back in
D.C., supporters create charts that compare Samuel A. Alito Jr. to
Sandra Day O'Connor, ''Model Justice." If O'Connor was a moderate, they
protest smugly, so is Alito.
Indeed, O'Connor's decision in Casey v. Planned Parenthood ruled that
states can regulate abortion as long as they don't impose an ''undue
burden" on the right. In South Dakota, says Looby ruefully, ''the
Legislature has never met a burden it didn't like." Has Alito?
Twenty years ago, Alito believed that the Constitution doesn't protect
abortion rights. He doesn't disavow that. He laid out a strategy on how
to eat away at abortion without a frontal assault on Roe. It was a
blueprint pro-lifers have followed, one regulation at a time. Later, as
a judge he said the state could order a woman to notify her husband
before she could get an abortion. O'Connor strongly disagreed.
That moderate ''model justice" Alito would replace also wrote this:
''the ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social
life of the nation has been facilitated by their ability to control
their reproductive lives." Does Alito agree?
More than 30 million women in America have had abortions since Roe.
Seventy percent of Americans say Alito shouldn't be confirmed if he
would end Roe. In the hearings, even prolife senators insist, ironically
and disingenuously, that Alito has an ''open mind."
But the question is not just whether he'll overturn Roe. It's whether
he'd let it be crushed. In 10 years, more than 400 state regulations
have been added and more are coming. When do burdens that force women to
state-shop for their rights become ''undue"?
Today, at the only clinic in South Dakota, the rancher doesn't know much
about Alito but believes abortion ''shouldn't be up to anyone but the
woman." Tomorrow, Dr. McCreary will fly back to Minneapolis. Kate Looby
will drive up to Pierre to fight the next set of regulations.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Samuel Alito Jr. sits before a committee,
and stolidly, doggedly, rejects one vastly overdue burden: telling us
what he believes.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/13/is_roe_v_wade_already_collapsing/
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