Life After Roe

The current issue of The Atlantic Monthly is on the stands. The cover story: "Life After Roe" (which I think is available on-line to non-subscribers).

I thought it'd be fascinating, but it wasn't. Without too much exaggeration, I think the article can be boiled down to this: The Republican Party will have serious troubles if Roe gets overturned because most people in the U.S. support abortion in the first trimester and in limited circumstances, yet pro-lifers don't. Excerpt:

In short, the overturning of Roe would put pro-life legislators in an agonizing position: many are inalterably opposed to including an exception for threats to women's health; they argue that these exceptions have been broadly interpreted by doctors and courts in the past to include psychological as well as physical health, in effect subverting the bans and making abortions available throughout pregnancy. “People in the pro-life movement are opposed to health exceptions in any form,” the pro-life scholar Paul Linton told me. “On the other hand, people will have to consider whether a narrow physical health exception might be a political necessity.” If any of these states now pondering extreme bills did, in fact, pass broad bans without a health exception, they should expect voter insurrections similar to the one now taking shape in South Dakota. By contrast, if health exceptions were included, although abortions might be formally restricted in some states from the beginning of pregnancy–a significant change in the law–elective abortions might, in practice, remain widely available for those who were willing to negotiate the procedural hurdles involved in proving a threat to their mental or physical health.