Women have had an essential right to terminate a pregnancy, especially in its earliest stages, since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe vs. Wade in 1973. No state or even national law can overturn that. Several attempts to do so have been ruled unconstitutional.
The only way that ruling can be changed is by another U.S. Supreme Court decision, or a constitutional amendment.
As a result, I suggested that abortion policy has no place in the current gubernatorial debate. Michigan has vast economic problems, and we have had longstanding issues over the fact that our state government isn’t working very well.
Additionally, now that all the federal stimulus money is gone, the state is facing the mother of all deficit crises next year.
My point was that these are issues that our next governor and next legislature can do something about, and should be focusing on. However, several listeners have said I was incorrect when I said that there is nothing a governor can do about the abortion issue. And, in fact, my critics are right.
No state can directly prohibit abortion. But lawmakers in Michigan as well as across the nation are constantly trying to test the margins of Roe vs. Wade in one way or another.
For example, the Michigan senate passed a bill last week requiring doctors to first give any woman who wants an abortion the most advanced ultrasound picture of the fetus possible.
They are hoping that when the woman sees an image that looks like a baby, she will change her mind and not have an abortion.
Planned Parenthood opposes this. They think this is intruding politics into a medical procedure.
But many opponents of abortion think the procedure is state-sanctioned murder, and that they have a religious and moral duty to try and stop it, or at least limit it as far as possible.
They know that today’s U.S. Supreme Court has a different set of justices than the ones who decided Roe vs. Wade, and that many are more conservative on social issues.
They are hoping to get some case before the court that will give them an opportunity to overturn that decision.
And that could happen sometime, though as a principle of jurisprudence the Supreme Court has always been reluctant to overturn any of their previous decisions, especially one that recent.
Still, abortion opponents have every right to try to make that happen, or to try for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion.
However, that’s not what those elected to run Michigan’s government should be focusing on. Nor is there any reason to think that either of the major candidates is out to change abortion policy, despite some misleading TV commercials.
Abortion is an important societal issue. But not one that belongs in the governor’s race this year. The candidates need to talk about ways Michigan can balance its books, educate its children, maintain its infrastructure and attract jobs.
That, after all, is what state government is for.
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