The Rightness of Roe
By In honor of it’s 35th Anniversary, here’s my three part series on why Roe v Wade was correctly decided:
The short version is that 1)it’s flatly false to say that the right identified in Roe had no previous doctrinal basis, and 2)properly understood the decision is consistent with the general democracy-promoting tenor of Warren Court-era jurisprudence. See also Douglas in Doe v. Bolton–who draws out the precedential connections more carefully than Blackmun–and Stevens in Thornburgh, who correctly points out that it’s ridiculous to claim that a woman has a fundamental right to avoid pregnancy before the fact but has no reproductive rights at all after the fact.
Finally, for new readers my piece in the Prospect explaining why the preferred High Broderite policy of “compromising” by providing formal protection to the rights of women who least need the protection while throwing the rights of those who do need it under the bus is completely unacceptable.