Cecile Richards
Every four years, we're reminded that the Supreme Court, and with it
Roe v. Wade, is
on the line in the upcoming presidential election. It's always true, but more so in 2016. The attacks on Planned Parenthood make that clear, and Cecile Richards, the organization's president, lays it out:
“In this coming presidential election, Roe v Wade is on the ballot. The battle lines were drawn last week. This isn’t about Planned Parenthood or fetal tissue” – one of the charges against the organisation is that it sells fetal tissue to scientific researchers – “it’s about whether abortion is going to be legal any more in this country.”
In an age when “it is within the memory of doctors in this country that young healthy women were dying in emergency rooms because abortion was illegal”, the stakes couldn’t get any higher. “We’re at an incredibly important moment.”
Republicans are going full-throttle against Planned Parenthood, part of a larger fight against abortion rights. In past cycles we could comfort ourselves that this fight was partly for show, a ploy for Republican politicians to keep their base whipped up, but that their actual goals were more limited. This time, they really mean it. And Stephen Breyer is 77 years old, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy are 79, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 82. The next president really could tip this court, if not into fully overturning
Roe v. Wade, at least into allowing massive new restrictions putting abortion out of reach for most American women. And women would die as a result, just as they died pre-
Roe.