That’s what my Congressman, Tom Davis, implies might happen if Roe v. Wade is overturned, according to this report in the Washington Post.
Reversal of the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide could produce an upheaval in U.S. politics and would put candidates who oppose abortion rights at risk of defeat in many parts of the country, a leading House Republican said yesterday.
Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the Government Reform Committee, said the desire of GOP conservatives to see a newly constituted Supreme Court eventually overturn Roe v. Wade could produce a political backlash, particularly in the suburbs. “It would be a sea change in suburban voting patterns,” Davis said at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
(….)
[T]he comments underscored the potential collision between the long-sought goal of religious and cultural conservatives to undo the court’s 1973 abortion rights decision and the political implications for the Republican Party’s aspirations of expanding its majorities in Congress and holding the White House after President Bush’s term ends.
Davis, who previously chaired his party’s congressional campaign committee, also offered a critical analysis of the state of his party, saying that while there is time for a turnaround, the president and the GOP must find a way out of their current problems or face major difficulties in the 2006 midterm elections.
To some extent, I think that Davis is right. The death of Roe, which I think should happen simply because it was horribly bad law, would put the abortion issue back in the hands of state legislatures, with the inevitable result that races for these seats would become a referendum on abortion. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. Since Congress is unlikely to be any more involved in the abortion debate than it is today, though, I don’t see the same impact occuring at the national level.
