Liberals have been suffering from a misplaced faith in the Supreme Court as the guarantor of rights and liberties. But it's politics — activism, persuasion, and voting — that will control the fate of the right to an abortion. jonathanchait writes
There is a moment in a Seinfeld episode about abortion that has always nagged at me. The plot pokes fun at crusaders for and against abortion rights, but it has one moment of painful earnestness, where an anti-abortion restaurant owner asks Elaine what gives her the right to disagree with his stance on abortion, and she replies, “The Supreme Court gives me the right to do that!”
The forthcoming demise of Roe v. Wade should dispel an illusion. Americans — liberals in particular, and boomers especially — have been suffering from a misplaced faith in the Supreme Court as the guarantor of rights and liberties. The right to abortion will not be secured by the occupants of a gleaming marble building. It will be the work of politics — activism, persuasion, and voting — that will control its fate.
In the second half of the 20th century, the Court reversed its historic character and began handing down liberal rulings. Roe v. Wade was the apogee of the Warren and Burger Courts, and the era imprinted the image of a liberal Court on the public mind. Roe v. Wade has become affixed in the public conscience as a synonym for the right to abortion. But one can support the right to abortion without believing that right is protected by the Constitution. After Roe, the fight for abortion rights will revert to an openly political struggle. The Court is not ending the abortion debate. It is throwing it open.
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