The U.S. Supreme Court majority in its recent decision striking down Roe v. Wade, failed to find any “deeply rooted history and tradition” of a right to obtain an abortion in the U.S. It went to great lengths to point out law after law banning the practice throughout our history.
What the court ignored without comment was that the vast majority of these laws routinely excluded cases where the life of the mother was in jeopardy. Looking only at this history, an objective observer could easily conclude that there was almost always a right to abortion in such circumstances.
Another equally important aspect deeply rooted in our history and tradition is that abortion was widely practiced and seldom discussed. It was considered as shameful a topic as contraception or divorce or hair tinting. Prosecutions under the abortion laws were exceedingly rare. The laws themselves, like laws prohibiting homosexuality served to push the practices into the shadows rather than eliminating them. Society satisfied itself by officially condemning the practice of abortion all the while knowing it was available at a cost and considerable risk.
The well-to-do woman, often a teen, who found herself pregnant could always find a “solution.”
The less affluent were left to suffer the consequences of the unwanted pregnancy, consequences that all too often fell on the child as well.
Who among us while going through school did not notice the absence of certain girls who “moved away,” “were taken ill,” or “dropped out” for no apparent reason? Many times the real reason was a secret abortion.
So, while a Constitutional right to obtain abortion may not have been officially deeply rooted in our history and tradition, the practice certainly has been so. We simply chose to avert our eyes from it unless it hit too close to home, and then we treated it as an unfortunate embarrassment. Not a federal case.
There are times when laws become obviously outdated and serve only as pretense to cover something we prefer to pretend does not exist. Abortion laws are an obvious example. They are, in practice, discriminatory by race, by economic class, by gender, and by social structure.
Similar to our ill-fated and short term experiment with prohibition of alcohol, abortion laws can never be adequately or equally enforced, and no one, other than fanatics, even wants them to be. Whether the Supreme Court justices can find the right to obtain an abortion in the U.S. Constitution, any woman with an unwanted pregnancy needs the right. No matter how many stumbling blocks are put in her way, history shows that she often will get it even at risk of her own life.
John Sucke is a resident of Waimea.
