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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33461 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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That doesn't explain why Roe v Wade didn't result in a similar widespread change in attitudes towards abortion.

Because Roe v. Wade wasn't similar. There was no unified post-Roe regime; different states had different abortion standards, and the federal government never threw its weight around on the issue as it did with so many other issues. Governors weren't sending the National Guard to carry women into abortion clinics, the FBI wasn't starting anti-abortion task forces to infiltrate and destroy pro-life groups, or any of the other measures the state used to enforce the racial regime of the Civil Rights Act.

Wasn't it illegal in every state before Roe vs Wade?

No. Only Pennsylvania prohibited abortion in all circumstances.

Twenty nine states (Arizona, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming) only permitted abortion in the case of danger to the mother's life.

One state (Mississippi) only permitted abortion in cases of rape.

Two states (Alabama and Massachusetts) permitted abortion in the case of danger to the mother's health, which especially in the case of MA resulted in essentially abortion at will because mental distress was classified a danger to the mother's health.

Thirteen states (Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oregon, and South Carolina) permitted abortion in cases of rape, incest, likely damage to the fetus, or danger to the mother's health.

Four states (Alaska, Hawaii, New York, and Washington) permitted abortion at a physician's discretion.

IIRC the abortion bans were informally enforced with a wink wink nudge nudge in lots of states, too- california seems to have been particularly known for that.

Worth noting that out of the 4 legal states, Hawaii, Washington and Alaska also had a requirement of at least 30 days residency in state first. Only New York would have been a "road trip" option (though I suppose Hawaii was already ruled out of that regardless of the law).

I'm not aware of any pre-Roe public polling on abortion, but the earliest polling data came just two years after Roe. Since then, there's been no significant change. So unless public opinion on this important moral question massively changed in two years and held steady since then, I think it's more reasonable to assume that Roe changed nothing about people's public opinion.

By point of comparison, public opinion on interracial marriage gradually changed from before and after anti-miscegenation laws were struck down by the court in 1967 in Loving v Virginia.

Roe v. Wade p. 118 n. 2 lists only thirty states that at the time had laws prohibiting abortion. See also Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health slip op. pp. 23–24 ("By the end of the 1950s, according to [a source cited in Roe v. Wade], statutes in all but four States and the District of Columbia prohibited abortion 'however and whenever performed, unless done to save or preserve the life of the mother'.").

Wikipedia so grain of salt etc, but legal in 4, illegal with exceptions for rape, incest, mother's health or nonviable fetus in 13, illegal with exceptions for risk to mother's health in 2, illegal with exception for rape in 1, illegal with exception for risk to mother's life in 29, illegal no exceptions in 1.

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