Below The Beltway

George Will has a column in today’s Washington Post pointing out that what a Presidential candidate thinks about abortion rights is, for the most part, irrelevant:

[I]t is said that if the Republican Party wants to be competitive in California in presidential politics, it must nominate a pro-choice candidate, of which there is only one — Rudy Giuliani. This is almost certainly true. It certainly is irrational because pro-choice Californians have next to nothing to fear — just as pro-life Californians have next to nothing to hope for — from a right-to-life president. The practical consequences of such a president concerning abortion would not differ significantly from Giuliani’s consequences. Here is why.

(…)

Many, perhaps most, Americans, foggy about the workings of their government, think that overturning Roe would make abortion, one of the nation’s most common surgical procedures, illegal everywhere. All it actually would do is restore abortion as a practice subject to state regulation. But because Californians are content with current abortion law, their legislature probably would adopt it in state law.

It is not irrational for voters to care deeply about a candidate’s stance regarding abortion because that stance is accurately considered an important signifier of the candidate’s sensibilities and sympathies, and of his or her notion of sound constitutional reasoning. But regarding abortion itself, what a candidate thinks about abortion rights is not especially important.

Will’s reasoning applies equally to voters in another other state and on either side of the abortion debate. In the end, the President has no authority when it comes to abortion, and the Supreme Court has authority only thanks to a bad-decided, bad-written 34 year old opinion. Returning to the legal status quo that existed prior to January 22, 1973 would not mean that abortion was suddenly illegal everywhere; it would simply return the issue to the states where it has belonged all along.

Instead of spending their time demonstrating in front of the Supreme Court building every year, people on opposing sides of the issue would be spending their time in state legislatures, or on the campaign trail for state-level officials that support their view of the issue. Again, that would seem to be the way that it should be; the sight of people demonstrating in front of the Supreme Court of the United States, as if it were a legislature bound by the will of the people rather than the rule of law, is strange indeed.

Furthermore, given the generally broad support for abortion rights at least during the early stages of pregnancy, it seems unlikely that there would be many, if any, states where abortion would be banned outright. And if there are, well, that’s what democracy is all about.