It tells you a lot about the U.S. Supreme Court, and the state of the country, that only one of its nine justices appears to have given the possibility of compromise on abortion more than a moment’s thought.
Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the majority in Friday’s decision to allow Mississippi’s law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks, setting aside the fetal viability standard of Roe v. Wade. But he explained in his concurrence that this could and should have been done without scrapping Roe completely, which the court chose to do.
The pragmatic, prudential case for doing as Roberts proposed is overwhelming. His argument also makes far better sense than both the majority opinion and the dissent in terms of its narrow legal reasoning. Yet he might as well have been talking to himself.
