Regardless of your feeling about the U. S. Supreme Court’s abortion ruling last week, here’s something to remember:

It’s not the final word.

It’s not the final word any more than the 1973 ruling in Roe was the final word.  It just turns the tables on the argument.  Abortion opponents have spent the last fifty years chipping away at the ruling and looking for the right legal lever to overturn the whole thing.  Dozens, probably hundreds, of state laws (somebody might add up all of the ones in Missouri) have attacked the issue only to be thrown out at some level of the court system. This one finally worked.

The ruling obviously does not end here.  The anti-abortion element of American society is on the defensive for the first time in almost a half-century. We will be interested to see if a pro-choice population that has watched as pro-life elements have attacked Roe will be galvanized into activism.

It is not generally a good idea to poke a dozing Tiger with a stick.

Survey after survey has indicated a general approval of Choice by Americans.  The Gallup organization in early June reported, “A steady 58% majority believe that the…ruling…should stand while 35% want it to be reversed. These sentiments are essentially unchanged since 2019.”

The wording on Gallup’s poll question has changed somewhat through the years but, “Dating back to 1989, support for reversing the decision has averaged 32%, while opposition has averaged 59%.”

In the most recent poll, the question focused on the impact of an overturn and whether respondents favored letting states set their own standards.  That survey, run last month, showed 63% of respondents thought it would be a “bad thing” to let states set their own policies. Those who said it will be a “good thing” were at 32%.

There has been no doubt this issue has been a partisan thing for a long time. In the most recent Gallup survey, 80% of Democrats and 62% of Independents favored the status quo.  Among republicans, 58% favored what the court ultimately has decided. Only 34% of independents and 15% of Democrats favored reversal.

But the U.S. Supreme Court is not ruled by polls although its makeup might be determined by people whose political positions ARE ruled by polls.

Catholic voters, for example.

A Pew Research Center 2019 survey found 56% of Catholics felt abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Forty-two percent disagreed.  The 56% is close to the 60% of non-evangelical Protestants and 64% of Black Protestants who supported legal abortion. In one of the fastest-growing demographics—people who are not religiously affiliated—83% told pollsters that abortions should be legal in all or almost all cases.

Writing in America, the Jesuit Review in 2018, Patrick T. Brown, a former government relations staffer for Catholic Charities USA, said, “Since 1973, no institution in the United States has been more firmly committed to protecting the unborn than the Catholic Church. Yet Catholics are just as likely to procure an abortion as other U.S. women. Why?

“According to the latest numbers from the Guttmacher Institute, 24 percent of women who procure abortions identify as Catholic, almost the same as 22 percent of all U.S. women who called themselves Catholic in a 2014 survey by Pew Research Center. In the same sources, evangelical Protestants made up 27 percent of all women in the United States but only 13 percent of those who underwent abortions, revealing a greater reluctance toward choosing abortion, a greater reluctance toward revealing their religion on a survey or both.”

Here’s one thing you won’t hear:   Republicans who are critical of “activist” judges when discussing this ruling.  You won’t hear Republicans railing against “legislating from the bench” either.

Again, this ruling tends to reverse the table.

There are fears this ruling is just the beginning of court-established national policies on contraception, LGTBQ+ rights, and gay marriage being dismantled and becoming matters of states’ rights.  Roe does not mean the court’s rulings on those issues automatically will be part of the Right’s version of a cancel culture but those who want them reversed should ponder how hard they want to poke those Tigers and what the reaction will be when they have poked too hard.

This ruling is certain to become a significant election issue in November when we will learn if it and reactions to findings of the January 6 Committee as well as fears of the present court’s future actions will produce less of a Red Wave than many on the Right expect.

Pro-life interests have prevailed.

For now.

But a younger generation born and raised in an era of birth control, abortion, and gender recognition in its various forms might be maturing with different outlooks.

In times such as these and decision such as this, we often return to former New York Governor Al Smith, a Catholic who ran for President in 1928, a time when there was a lot of “anti” attitudes in our nation.  Many think Smith’s greatest liability in the election was his religion.  He warned:

“It is a confession of the weakness of our own faith in the righteousness of our cause when we attempt to suppress by law those who do not agree with us.”