Krauthammer on RoeMike Rappaport

He writes:

Legalizing abortion by judicial fiat (Roe v. Wade) insteadof by democratic means has its price. One is that the issue remains sociallyunsettled. People take to the streets when they have been deprived of resort tolegislative action.

The other effect is to render the very debate hopelesslymuddled. Instead of discussing what a decent society owes women and what itowes soon-to-be-born infants, and trying to balance the two by politicallyhammering out regulations that a broad national consensus can support, wedebate the constitutional niceties of a 35-year-old appallingly crafted SupremeCourt decision.

These powerful points are followed up by a strong column defending Rudy Guiliani’s position on abortion.

For what it is worth, I am not pro-life.  As a legislator, I would vote to allow abortions in the early months of a pregnancy, but I would also vote to approve waiting limits, discloures to women, and other limited restrictions, all on the grounds that abortion is a serious matter where a life of some kind is affected.  The notion, pushed by many pro-choice people, that abortion requires less restrictions than other medical procedures, that it involves more privacy — so for example underage girls are allowed to have them without parental consent — is deeply mistaken.   

While I would vote as a legislator to permit many abortions, I think that Roe was an absurd decision as a matter of constitutional law.  Given the tremendous controversy about abortion and the fact that the Constitution says nothing about it, one needs a pretty extreme constitutional philosophy to have joined those opinions.