Opinion by Michael Gerson: Abortion deserves a sober debate. Instead, it gets a war of unreason.
In 1973, the Supreme Court came down heavily on one side, essentially telling pro-life citizens they could never politically win because the Constitution wouldn’t allow it. They naturally felt disenfranchised. If in 1973 the court had held that fetal life deserved all the protections of the 14th Amendment, I imagine pro-choice citizens would have felt disenfranchised as well.
This is the problem of seeking monumental social change by convincing a Supreme Court majority rather than working toward a social and political consensus. In the United States, lasting legitimacy is the product of democratic consent. Rule by court diktat is written in sand, even if the tide rises only once in a half-century.
It’s disappointing to watch elements of the left react to the democratization of the abortion issue by attacking democracy itself. The argument goes: The electoral college gives Republicans — who have lost the popular vote in— an advantage in winning the presidency and appointing Supreme Court justices. And the gerrymandering of state legislative districts has resulted in a GOP stranglehold on many state legislatures. Thus, the institutions where the left loses are rigged and illegitimate.
I’m more comfortable with the gradualism recommended in Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s prickly concurrence to” in Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s ruling opinion. Roberts’s temperamental conservatism might have reached a similar conclusion over the course of a few more cases and lowered the initial shock to the body politic.
For the foreseeable future, the abortion debate — with all its tragic complexities — has been returned to the realm of democracy. And there is little evidence our democracy is prepared for it.
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