The Two-Thirds Compromise
Comparing the politics of abortion and slavery
In today’s issue of Current, I have a piece, on the 52nd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, exploring the ongoing complexities in the politics of abortion in the twenty-first century, one I compare to the complexities in the politics of slavery in the nineteenth. In both cases, the federal government had fashioned fractional solutions: the three-fifths compromise in the Constitution, in which enslaved people counted as 60 percent of a person, and the Roe compromise, in which a human fetus counted as a person in the last trimester of pregnancy). Strictly speaking, neither fractional formulation fully made sense, and neither was satisfactory to those who cared the most on both sides of the issue. But a rough consensus lasted for decades. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 (which declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820 null and void) and the Dobbs decision of 2022 (which rendered Roe null and void) effectively de-federalized the two issues, intensifying debates over states’ rights and resulting in increasing polarization by partisans. In the case of abortion, this has meant efforts to block abortion after conception on the part of Republicans, and an unwillingness to state any conditions under which an abortion should be illegal on the part of Democrats. This tenuous and perhaps untenable situation is where we are today.
“A house divided cannot stand,” Abraham Lincoln said in 1858, invoking the Gospel of Matthew. “I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided.” It remains to be seen how the national house will stand in the case of abortion.
Of 193 U.N. countries, the United States is one of eight countries that allows, at the federal level, abortion on demand without any gestational limits along with Australia, Canada, China, Guinea-Bissau, Mexico, South Korea, and Vietnam.
It is possible to be pro-choice (as I am) yet think that abortion after viability is horrific. Of course there are exceptions, but as a rule, first trimester abortion is supported by 67% of Americans, second trimester - 45% and third trimester 11%. Seems civilized to me. Neither political party is listening.