Roe Thoughts

Interesting piece in Broadsheet today commenting on a Chicago Tribune feature about an abortion clinic in Granite City, IL, just this side of the Missouri border. The Hope Clinic for Women has:

…encountered "many difficult situations" ever since neighboring Missouri passed a law allowing civil litigation to be brought against those who "cause, aid, or assist" Missouri minors in getting abortions -- anywhere -- without parental consent. (Shades of CIANA, coming soon to a Senate near you.)

While Illinois does not require parental consent -- making it a "magnet state" for abortions, quoth the bill's sponsor, Missouri state Sen. John Loudon -- at this point, it might as well. After some legal wrangling, the clinic finally announced that it would no longer provide abortions for Missouri minors without parental consent. (Almost 200 of the 5,400 patients the clinic served in 2005 were pregnant minors from Missouri.) "I think it's very disturbing that one state can have such a chilling effect on another state's laws," Hope Clinic executive director Sally Burgess said. Yep.

This is exactly why the argument that overturning Roe might be “a good thing,” so that abortion can go back to the states and “Red Staters will get what they deserve” is a bad, bad argument. Aside from the obvious fact that it ignores not everyone who resides in a Red State is a conservative (the counterpoint most often invoked in response when the “good thing” argument has been raised in comments here and elsewhere), it’s predicated on the fallacy that every state’s abortion laws will exist independently from all others. The assumption is made that women in Red States who want an abortion will have to travel to Blue States, but rarely do we consider whether those women will be able to travel to Blue States. Financial concerns are, of course, one issue; laws like that passed in Missouri add a whole other level of restriction.

Some of my less political-minded girlfriends used to respond to my alarmism about Roe being overturned by saying, “It will never be overturned.” Now that it looks like a distinct possibility, I hear, “Abortions will still be legal in most states.” I get the distinct feeling that losing the protection afforded by Roe will leave a whole lot of people utterly gobsmacked by what happens in its void, and realizing you really don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.