George Bernard Shaw once described the British and Americans as “two great peoples divided by a common language.” Sometimes I get the feeling that although we speak more or less the same language, in a number of ways we might as well live in two separate galaxies. This was made abundantly clear in the past 24 hours, following the leak of a draft Supreme Court ruling suggesting that justices would vote to overturn Roe v Wade, thereby ending any national guarantee of abortion rights. . It would mean that abortion laws would be determined by individual states and many are ready to ban the practice altogether. A dark day for many women living in them: criminalization is likely to simply drive the procedure underground, with tremendous security risks for poorer women in particular.
Abortion is not only a singularly divisive issue in America, but its abortion debate is unlike any other in the West: one of absolute morality of right and wrong, and little sense of pragmatism or common ground. Despite its “pro-life” moniker, abortion’s staunchest opponents fight to tolerate it under any circumstances, even when a mother’s life may be at stake, and often ignore proven methods to reduce unwanted pregnancies. like sex education. Meanwhile, hardline pro-choice advocates often speak of abortion as an unlimited good, rather than a grim necessity. The United States has gone to war with itself before, but there is not the slightest chance that it will come out of this ideological battle with anything close to consensus.
Polarization has been an unintended consequence of the powerful United States Supreme Court ever since it began upholding the Constitution in a famous 19th-century case. The system means that judges spend vast amounts of time on arcane arguments: Does the Constitution’s right to privacy imply a right to abortion? Does the “right to bear arms” refer only to the military? Does the second amendment cover automatic rifles?
In 1973, the Court in the Roe case felt able to argue that, had there been a large-scale medical abortion at the time the Constitution was written, it would have been warranted; a huge exaggeration to read in a document written at a time when women had no right to anything at all. The final product looks amazing to the foreign observer; a powerful class of judges who try to interpret what the people of the 18th century thought, according to their own points of view, often while proclaiming impartiality.
This not only creates barriers between people and politics, but also changes political incentives. In Britain, at least, we can have a fairly open debate about what we really mean. The legalization of abortion in 1967 followed a lengthy public discussion and free vote in the House of Commons, with a level of legitimacy (and the consent of the losers) built into the outcome. The American system, by contrast, seems to encourage political gymnastics, turning campaign energies toward courting judges and funding court cases rather than trying to persuade. While legalization in Britain largely resolved the abortion debate, the more underhanded nature of Roe vs. Wade arguably helped reinvigorate the conservative movement in the US.
Despite the enormous power of the Supreme Court, it can only work on cases that come before it, so rulings often lack the level of detail you might find in regular law. Former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, while ardently pro-choice, argued that Roe v. Wade was vague, far-reaching, and legally difficult to justify, and would be vulnerable to future attack. The last 24 hours have certainly made me feel grateful for Britain’s most fluid organic constitution. For all our faults, there is much to be said for a gradually evolving set of rules and institutions, rather than deriving such vast national and existential meaning from a single document.
Still, despite growing levels of political division, it seemed that most Americans were committed to working within the confines of an imperfect system to achieve their goals or thwart the ambitions of their opponents. Every country needs its institutions, its founding myths and universal truths in order to function. And for Americans, the US Constitution has always been held in almost sacred reverence.
It is longer? I fear that the United States will no longer be able to agree on anything. Much of what used to hold the country together is under attack from the extremes. While the Trumpian right stomps on constitutional norms through its “stolen election” myth, the hard left’s frenzied attack on history and the founding fathers threatens the very foundation of national identity. efforts like the New York Times‘s 1619 Project seeks to rewrite the past, presenting racism not as part of the American experience, but as the sum total of it.
The latest revelation is already triggering a series of increasingly extreme counter-solutions; everything from burning down the Court to intimidating the judges. Even the leak itself suggests the weakening of the rules on an unprecedented scale. Federalism was supposed to be America’s great safety valve, a crucial tool that allowed this vast and varied country to function. But the outcry over the leak suggests it has also helped cement cleavages that are tragically irrevocable.
Reference-www.telegraph.co.uk