Nathan Newman says that during the time of Roe v. Wade abortion laws were being liberalized across the country. So the situation pre-Roe was nowhere as bad as I thought in a previous post.
He also feels that Roe put the kibbosh on feminist organizing, and allowed wealthy women, whose reproductive rights were now protected, to be picked off from the feminist coalition by the GOP.
Todd Larason, of Molehill.org wrote in and suggested that:
Two problem[s] with extrapolating from things like sodomy laws is that 1. they’re rarely enforced, so there’s rarely pressure to change them, and 2. legislators who believe they’re unconstitutional may vote for them anyway, depending on the courts to throw them out, rather than expending political capital on what they believe to be a pointless battle. To get a good idea of what abortion laws would be like, you need to look at enforced laws.
My concern is, in the absence of Roe, that states whose legislatures are dominated by religous conservatives will ban abortion and make certain that the ban is enforced by whatever means necessary. And in states which are not, such laws become time bombs. Wisconsin, for example, has a draconian law on the books. Roe invalidated it, but the moment Roe is overturned, that law would be a time bomb.
So even if Roe was a bad strategy at the time, the opposition has deep pockets and a strong devotion to the cause, thus, we’ll have to continue to defend Roe.
Edited to tone down the stridency.
