The New York Times newsletter The Morning has a brief but helpful discussion of the Supreme Court draft decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade, with links to many sources.
I looked at the text of the draft, here and there. The four points I found most chilling:
~ The characterization of Roe as the imposition of “the same highly restrictive regime” on the nation. To characterize a decision that affirms an individual freedom as the imposition of a “highly restrictive regime” suggests to me the “Freedom Is Slavery” logic of 1984. Access to abortion does nothing to restrict anyone’s right not to have an abortion.
~ The insistence that the question of abortion be left to the individual states. What further questions of individual freedom might now be left to the individual states to decide? The right to marry? Access to contraception?
~ The absence of the words incest and rape. The members of the majority are unwilling to acknowledge circumstances for which even some zealous opponents of abortion are willing to allow exceptions.
~ The long appendix of nineteenth-century statutes criminalizing abortion at all stages of pregnancy. From Texas, 1854:
every such offender, and every person counseling or aiding or abetting such offender, shall be punished by confinement to hard labor in the Penitentiary not exceeding ten years.We are going backwards.