U.S. Supreme Court Justice Must Restrain Themselves On Abortion

Hippocrates condemned abortion; Aristotle thought it less cruel than exposing unwanted infants to the elements. The West has been arguing about this hard moral problem for over 2,000 years, says The Economist.

Photo Insert: A leaked draft of a majority opinion from the US Supreme Court obtained by Politico, a news organization, suggests that the court will overturn Roe v Wade, the 50-year-old decision that makes abortion legal until the fetus becomes viable.

“Most Western democracies have found a compromise between the liberal position, held by this newspaper, that the state should not control women’s bodies; and the most conservative position, that any abortion is murder.

In Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and Japan, legislatures have allowed abortion early in pregnancy and made it illegal later. Most Americans agree with that, but their country stands apart,” it added. If so, state law would take precedence.

Most abortions look set to become illegal in half of the states; some bans would include cases of rape or incest.

Better-off women can take time off work and travel to legal clinics, so the burden would fall mainly on poorer women. Banning abortion would increase the number of pregnancy-related deaths, by over 20%, according to one study.

The draft decision has been panned by legal scholars who claimed that the ponente, Samuel Alito, argued that abortion was not contemplated in the US Constitution and that women may not even have the right to decide what to do with their own bodies.

An advocate of “originalism,” Alito’s position has been mocked by critics who said he could not be expected to draft a decision on the disposition of cars since the US Code was written when there were no cars around.

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