Rethinking Roe

I am a liberal. I am a huge Hubert Humphrey-loving, bleeding-heart, tax-em-till-they-squeal, peacenik liberal who voted for John Kerry grudgingly because I didn't think he was far left enough. I also think every woman in this country has the right to have an abortion.\nYet, I think we should overturn Roe v. Wade.\nWhy overturn the court case that protects first-trimester abortions under federal law? It seems like a strange move for a liberal, but hear me out.\nFirst, it's on shaky constitutional ground. When Judge William Pryor, a man who I generally despise, called Roe v. Wade "the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law," he might have been overlooking a few cases (notably Plessy v. Ferguson, which allowed "separate but equal" facilities), but he wasn't entirely wrong. \nThe reasoning behind the Roe decision, as concisely as possible, states that the Constitution affords a right to privacy and that this implied right also gives the woman a right to have an abortion. Now the Constitution doesn't explicitly state a right to privacy, but such a right is implied by the wording of the Constitution, particularly the Ninth and 14th Amendments, along with assorted others. That's fine, and a right to privacy clearly lives in the spirit of the Constitution. But by extending this right to privacy to a right to an abortion, we've stretched the parchment of the Constitution awfully thin. Maybe I'm the exception, but I can't really see the unambiguous logical connection from privacy to abortion.\nSecond, contrary to what Roe's most adamant supporters claim, if Roe were erased from the books today, abortion itself would not be in any danger of vanishing. Assuming Roe were overturned, the power to decide abortion's fate would be delegated to the states, which could theoretically pass laws to ban abortion. Yet, in a November Gallup poll, only 16 percent of respondents believed that abortion should always be illegal. And even in a state like, say, Utah, which has a significant pro-life slant, a law outlawing abortion outright would be pretty unpalatable to the majority of people.\nThird, Roe has allowed us to entirely polarize an issue that shouldn't be polarized in the first place. In the same Gallup poll, 56 percent of respondents believed that abortion should be legal under certain circumstances. There are all sorts of discrepancies and arbitrary judgments that must be made to form a personal opinion, and in this society, such opinions have become dangerous.\nJust ask President Bush who he should appoint to the Supreme Court: a well-credentialed, experienced jurist with years of experience on the federal bench, or a personal lawyer with little to no Constitutional law experience whose only credential seems to be a non-existent opinion on abortion? Why should such a gray area of legal and moral interpretation serve as a "litmus test" of a person's character? Instead of clearing things up, Roe only obscured things further, forcing opinions beneath the surface.\nDecisions about abortion rights, like it or not, belong in the realm of state legislatures. No matter how much I believe in preserving and expanding abortion rights, the ends cannot justify the means. Roe should go.