The abortion hangers and flyers that were on display around campus this week were an explicit way to raise awareness about abortion rights and President Bush’s opposition to them.

Many women are angered by what they perceive as a President who can tell them what to do with their bodies as long as he can stack the Supreme Court against them. The simple fact of the matter is, however, that no one is telling women what to do with their bodies. Presidential opinion and the actual law are two different things; It would take some major legal hurdles to line up the former with the latter. Also, the recent piece of legislation that President Bush signed into law – the Unborn Victims of Violence Act – sought only to more harshly penalize those criminals that perpetrate violent acts against pregnant women. Much of the controversy surrounding this statute is that it implicitly recognizes a fetus as a life, something the United States Constitution, after Roe v. Wade, has not done. I suppose much of the paranoia over losing a women’s “right to choose” grows out of a fear that if the law does recognize that an unborn child possesses some life (gasp!) it is merely a slippery slope until abortion is outlawed.

This, however, brings me to the next part of my argument. Some contend that the tenuous balance of the Supreme Court justices – five pro-choice and four pro-life – is at stake in the next appointment of a member of the high court. This belief, however, is shortsighted. First off, it is impossible to predict exactly how any vote over the constitutionality of abortion will go down. Although educated guesses are plausible, history suggests that such predictions are unwise. For example, former Chief Justice Earl Warren presided over some of the most momentous cases ever brought before the Court, from school desegregation and the reading of Miranda Rights, to the right to interracial marriage. Today, most reasonable people agree with these decisions. Before his appointment to the Court however, Warren had been governor of California and was considered a relatively conservative politician. No one would have predicted the liberal agenda that he and his fellow justices would pursue over the next two decades. When former Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower was asked what the single biggest mistake of his presidency had been, he replied, “The appointment of Earl Warren to the Supreme Court.” My point here is to illustrate that prejudgements on the probable outcome of Supreme Court decisions can often be incorrect.

Furthermore, the worry that only a slim five-justice majority retaining abortion rights clearly shows that many women and pro-choice advocates are only concerned with preferable outcomes rather that the means used to achieve them. That is, as long as abortion rights stay intact, the constitutional arguments used to achieve that right, no matter how questionable, will always be correct. Numerous constitutional scholars note that a close reading of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision by the late Justice Harry Blackmun can be legitimately challenged. The opinion was not divinely inspired and is full of logical missteps. As such, the creation of a constitutional “right to privacy” is an inherently controversial one at best; Inquiries into its legitimacy should not be regarded as offensive, as many pro-choice zealots believe, but as part of an ongoing intellectual debate.

The last point I would like to make is in response to the view that should Roe v. Wade be reversed, the safety of women’s health practices will quickly regress. This argument is somewhat extreme. A common misconception about the Roe decision is the belief that its reversal would outlaw abortion in the entire United States. This, however, is incorrect. Roe simply noted that states did not have a right to ban the practice of abortion. Hence, were Roe to be overturned it would mean only that states now had the ability to ban abortion if they so choose. A liberal state such as Massachusetts would obviously retain a woman’s abortion rights.

I concede that fear for the health and safety of women is a legitimate concern. To be sure, there are numerous states that would ban abortion practices outright following the reversal of Roe, leaving numerous women whom sought an abortion in the dark. I only ask that those who blindly follow a pro-choice stance consider this: If the majority of the population in any given state was in favor of banning abortion, and the state legislature chose to act in response to those beliefs by making it law, shouldn’t that law be considered legitimate? After all, isn’t that what democracy’s all about?

Michael A. Cipriano is a senior in the College of Communication.