Saying that Roe v Wade resulted in an era of increased polarization is completely sidelining the facts that

A) women we're suffering from the lack of the right at the time.

B) that churches and GOP actually drove the polarization, they chose to use it as a device to divide.

It would be like saying abolition of slavery was too soon because it caused the civil war... Who cares the law shouldn't have to wait for cave men to move forward.

Funny enough - all of the actions that the Supreme Court took to entrench and strengthen slavery arguably were one of the things that caused the Civil War.

a) no. States were in the process of legalizing it - with restrictions far more in line with the rest of the democratic world.

b) no. In fact, most churches (the SBC for example) polarized _after_ roe v. wade. In fact, most evangelicals were left-leaning prior to this ruling. (Some partisan hacks will insist that it was desegregation that led to this, but Brown versus Board was 1954, and the SBC was still solidly liberal in 1972). Roe v. Wade lit everything on fire. (See RBG's comments on Roe V. Wade), precisely because it was a un-elected court making a change that no law could challenge.

It's telling that simply saying "this is not a matter for the supreme court but the people's representatives" is so incredibly controversial.

My hope on all of this is that this ends the imperial court - and abortion stops being the mother of all wedge issues, and allows some elements that moved to the right because of the undemocratic change to move back to the left now that the democratic norms are re-established.

> It's telling that simply saying "this is not a matter for the supreme court but the people's representatives" is so incredibly controversial.

There are of course two followup questions here:

1. Would the current supreme court allow a federal abortion law that codifies roe? The SC opinion explicitly notes that their ruling returns this to the states, but federal representatives are representatives too.

2. Does it really make sense for rights to be up to the whims of the legislature? If it takes 60 votes to pass a national abortion legalization, and 50 senate votes to repeal it, will we end up with lasting legislation, or just a de-facto ban because abortion is repealed every 2-4 years?

Regarding #2, the congress legislatively and the constitutional amendment process is truly the only place that makes sense to establish federal abortion rights. Frankly the amendment process is literally the best place because it’s the only way to establish enumerated rights.

Will it be hard? Extremely. Is it likely to fail before it’s done? Absolutely. But when it’s finally done, at whatever compromise, those rights will be enumerated and well established and it will take millions of people to take them away…instead of six people.

In the meantime we have states democratically choose their path.

1. Yes, they say as much in the opinion. (Take it for what it's worth). I think conservatives have not factored this into their plan. 2. I think at some point people will punish parties for that. Right now both parties could take absolutionist positions on abortion (late term versus outlawing for all reasons) because they didn't have the power to do anything because the USSC ruled on the issue. That made it a red meat promise to their supporters, without them ever having to really do anything about it..

now they do.

I'm all in on "B" as the mechanism of division. The polarization is intentional and manufactured.

Divided we fall.