Abortion Not Legalized

As I recall, in the early eighties, the earlier libertarian movements were dominated by social liberals, with a partially constructed doctrine over many economic issues. The movement was popular on college campuses, as the followers were young and idealistic. Said one commenter, "The Libertarian Party has an uphill battle. Someone who wants to sell the roads, bridges and universities to pay off entitlements and the national debt, is not likely to be taken seriously." Most were decidedly pro-choice.
 
In the same way that all states desegregated on their own initiative?

This is a different issue.

(By the way, am I the only one irked by the constant but poorly justified association drawn between legalizing abortion and implementing racial equality?)
 
If the Feds hadn't legalized abortion from on high, the issue would have been left to the individual states. Obviously, large parts of the deep south and mountain west would have made it illegal; basically, those areas that are strongly conservative. Also obviously, it would be made legal in many other parts of the country. Thus, we'd have the issue of women crossing state lines to get abortions. If this situation continued to today, the US population would be arguing about whether the Feds should make a ruling and make abortion either legal or illegal all over the country...
 
Politics -

US Politics will be different. The whole abortion/right to life issue motivated a lot of the religious right to become involved in politics - given that many of them would otherwise have either kept out of politics or stayed on the democratic side of the fence - you might not have seen such a strong Republican/conservative stretch over the last 30-40 years.

Sure they're only 5-10% of the GOP vote, but they're a larger portion of the donor base and the activist core (the folks who go door to door, work on campaigns, etc.).

Without the religious lining up on the GOP side, you would also have had much less anti-religious animus from the Dem activists.

Culture -

Again, less dramatic religious/non-religious split. Less invective in general (not none, both sides will find other things to squabble over).

Butterflies -

That's a few thousand more babies every year from 1973 onwards. By this point the oldest would be 36 years old. The potential for differences (for good and ill) is very hard to gauge. How many inventors, artists, politicians, theorists, authors were killed in the womb? How many murders, rapists, molesters, serial-killers, arsonists?

No way to tell.

Maybe we'ld all drive flying cars powered by portable fusion reactors.

Or maybe we'ld all be dead courtesy of a tailored supervirus.

This would probably mean fewer sit-in protests in front of abortion clinics in states that legalized abortion.
 

boredatwork

Banned
This would probably mean fewer sit-in protests in front of abortion clinics in states that legalized abortion.

I expect so. Sans nationalization & the hyping of the issue on both sides for fund raising & base motivation, you will probably see a lot less passion around the issue for most people.

You'll still have the true believers on each side, but the political types will have latched on to something else.
 
I think that the answer to the question "WI no Roe v Wade" would be the same as the answer to the DBWI question "WI no Bowers v Hardwick" whose DB scenario is a Bowers v Hardwick that anticipates OTL Lawrence v Texas.

Here we are with a map of sodomy legislation prior to Lawrence v Texas. Illinois struck its sodomy laws in 1962, therefore being light yellow color.
Golden yellow indicates sodomy liberalization in the 1970s or 1980s, mostly prior to Bowers v Harwick (1986).
Blood orange indicates a 1990-2002 date. They would be the states we'd really have to argue about if Bowers v Hardwick had anticipated Lawrence v Texas if we were talking about sodomy laws in a DBWI scenario where Bowers v Hardwick was decided as per OTL.
Red indicates all the states where sodomy was illegal until Lawrence v Texas.

400px-Map_of_US_sodomy_laws.svg.png


What can we learn from OTL sodomy legislation?

Firstly, Roe v Wade only anticipated a proposed liberalization of abortion in most states. I'd even say that most states in golden yellow would have legalized abortion by the end of the 1970s, as it happened in most European countries. I even don't think that they'd restrict abortion again if Roe v Wade would ever be overturned, what I don't believe to happen. Yes, I know Planned Parenthood v Pennsylvania, but still, don't you think as well that, after almost four decades of abortion on demand availability, too many generations became used to easily mend their contraceptive accidents?

Secondly, the two Bible Belts, the greater in the Southeast and the lesser in the Rockies, would more or less have withered the trend. In that area would be very few states with Irish-style legislation (no abortion except at death risk), more with a Polish-style legislation (life risk, birth defects, rape) and many more with a German-style legislation (literally illegal, factually unenforced or overruled, streching a social indication to a factual abortion on demand). The shade of blood orange may be representative for actual state legislation to surprisingly vary among neighboring states of cultural proximity. Some may take longer, some may take faster, and it's often by coincidence. Or do you really think that Michigan really is to be more conservative than e.g. Georgia?

Thirdly, there would indeed remain some nastinesses that Roe v Wade swept away and some even weren't swept away in OTL. I remind that Florida law punished persons sponsoring abortion journeys to Mexico to pregnant minors who either don't have the parental consent for abortion or were rejected legal consent by a Florida court for being "too young to see the psychial problems arising from the guilt emotions to the aborted child". Now you could say that parents acted responsible when they prohibit their minor daughters to take an abortion. What would you say if parents wanted their minor daughters to abort the child against her will?

Fourthly, an absence of Roe v Wade won't assure an analogue not to come at a later time, after more states reformed themselves and when the court decision would practically rather serve as a territorial gap filler than as a real landmark decision. Such a delayed Roe v Wade would be less controversial and not be in any real danger if a Republican president has the luck of picking another "originalist" as a SCOTUS judge. Lawrence v Texas is not in any danger IMHO, an anticipating Bowers v Hardwick, at a time when gay saunas were closed in San Francisco to curtail the hot spots of inter-gay engagement due to the AIDS epidemic, would have been in danger.


Now the big question: I'm a pro-choicer. Do I support Roe v Wade or do I reject it in the way Ginsburg does as it radicalized otherwise unaware pro-lifers? I support Roe v Wade, because it makes life much easier as a girl in Alabama when you're, well, late.
 
Every state? I don't think say South Carolina or Idaho would legalize abortion without a forced court order.

I'm not sure when South Carolina would have decided to ban them. As for Idaho, I don't know. There's so much data to consider with this issue that it's hard to know where each state would fall.
 
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