The aftermath of the Dobbs decision: confusion, fear, and danger

With the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization deci­sion over­turn­ing Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court has deter­mined that the issue of abor­tion is best left to be dealt with amongst the fifty states. And for­mer-pres­i­dent Trump con­tin­ues to echo this propo­si­tion, espe­cial­ly if it removes any onus from him to take a posi­tion on the sub­ject. However, a sim­ple exam­i­na­tion of the facts demon­strates just how ludi­crous this pro­pos­al is and has become.

Hardly a day pass­es when the news doesn’t have an item relat­ing how one state or anoth­er has passed, or is in the process of dis­cussing, a law hav­ing to do with abor­tion and access to med­ical care relat­ed to the procedure.

In the inter­im since the deci­sion by the Court, some state leg­is­la­tures have even tak­en up con­sid­er­a­tion of laws pro­hibit­ing their cit­i­zens from trav­el­ing to oth­er states for the pro­ce­dure, when the home state has already made it impos­si­ble to secure an abor­tion there.  These efforts have even extend­ed to propo­si­tions for uti­liz­ing state police forces to cur­tail inter­state trav­el to access abor­tion services.

It was only recent­ly that a woman in Texas was forced to trav­el to anoth­er state for an abor­tion even though doc­tors had deter­mined that her fetus was not viable and posed a dis­tinct risk to her health if she con­tin­ued to term.  In essence, the state was order­ing her to con­tin­ue her preg­nan­cy and to bear a child which almost cer­tain­ly would have died short­ly after birth. While seek­ing an abor­tion was not some­thing that this moth­er-to-be had antic­i­pat­ed, it was an out­come which had become nec­es­sary.  The state’s atti­tude smacks of an autoc­ra­cy not wide­ly wit­nessed since the demise of Nazism.

Now Louisiana has passed a law clas­si­fy­ing Mifepristone a Schedule IV drug under that state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law.  Legislators there laud­ed the law as a pro­tec­tive mea­sure for women when, in real­i­ty, it is mere­ly anoth­er method of attack­ing abor­tion and repro­duc­tive rights.  Under the Louisiana law, any per­son in pos­ses­sion of the drug with­out a writ­ten pre­scrip­tion from a physi­cian will face charges — and women all across the coun­try have secured the med­ica­tion by mail.  It would seem that the Louisiana law infringes on the rights of mail to move freely among the states. Other states will like­ly fol­low Louisiana’s lead.

So, the sug­ges­tion that abor­tion laws are best left to the states can best be char­ac­ter­ized as noth­ing less than idiocy.

Will states be allowed to deter­mine which vehi­cles can tra­verse inter­state high­ways?  What mail can freely flow across state lines?  Will states come up with laws that seek to keep for­mer felons from enter­ing their bor­ders?  Will some­thing ordered from Amazon not be allowed into a state when the same item is per­fect­ly legal every­where else?

Once upon a time sev­er­al states coined their own mon­ey, which often was not legal ten­der in adja­cent states. In fact, there were tri­als in colo­nial Williamsburg against indi­vid­u­als who attempt­ed to pass mon­ey that had been mint­ed in an adjoin­ing state but was not con­sid­er legal in Virginia.  Fortunately, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment deter­mined that a nation­al coinage worked best for the entire country.

This is just an exam­ple of how stu­pid state-for­mu­lat­ed laws can be when they affect oth­er states.

But, as Trump stat­ed recent­ly (almost inco­her­ent­ly) in an inter­view, he will be com­ing up with a pol­i­cy on abor­tion “very soon.” Really?  Numerous pun­dits sug­gest that he will nev­er do so because it is so easy for him to pass off the author­i­ty to the indi­vid­ual states and stay safe­ly aloof from the sub­ject even though he knows that a sig­nif­i­cant major­i­ty of Americans do not hold with the extreme views of his MAGA fol­low­ers toward strict restric­tions on abor­tion access.

In the end, maybe the Supreme Court will one day real­ize its mis­take in the Dobbs deci­sion and reverse it just as was done when Roe was turned upside down.  After all, there is a long list of legal opin­ions com­ing from the Court that has proven wrong over time, and san­er minds have cor­rect­ed those wrongs.