What Should Happen If Abortion Returns to the States?

Undertaking such an action would be unprecedented, but would recognize that the high court has traditionally moved to expand individual rights, rather than “sometimes expanding and other times contracting,” them, Bashman wrote.

Unspoken in Bashman’s piece is the reality that such an action would also turn already contentious political races into the equivalent of demolition derbies, as the Big Two parties, and their voters, mobilized by a seismic issue, vied for control of statehouses and the halls of Congress.

That’s particularly true of battleground states, such as Pennsylvania, which was determinative to President Joe Biden’s 2020 win, and helped hand the U.S. House to Democrats in 2018.

For the last seven years, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Tom Wolf, and his veto pen, have stood as a bulwark against repeated Republican attacks on abortion access. Wolf, who has served the constitutional maximum of two terms, will leave office in January 2023.

State Attorney General Josh Shapiro, currently the only Democrat running for the party’s nomination, has vowed to continue that policy, upping the ante in an already competitive contest for an open seat.

In his op-Ed, Bashman, remains silent on the political implications of any such move on abortion, says he doesn’t see any other way for the court to proceed.

“Ordinarily, the court will merely postpone those issues for another day,” he wrote. “But here, if the court in fact decides to overrule Roe and Casey, the best course is for the court to address those issues head-on in a manner that is most fair to all concerned.”

That conclusion will most certainly not cheer people who can get pregnant, but it does give them a fighting chance.

An award-winning political journalist, John L. Micek is Editor-in-Chief of The Pennsylvania Capital-Star in Harrisburg, Pa. Email him at jmicek@penncapital-star.com and follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek.