Word: roe
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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First promulgated by the Reagan administration in 1988, the gag rule was a not-so-disguised way for members of the religious right and other anti-abortion activists to inject their narrow views into government policies otherwise protected by Roe v. Wade. If family planning clinics can't even discuss abortion, gag rule proponents reason, fewer women will have abortions...
...Supreme Court came perilously close to overturning Roe last summer, and many of the nation's other federal judges oppose abortion rights. In the long term, we should work to pass pro-abortion rights legislation in the states. While we should not ignore legal fights, this battle should also be fought at the grass roots. Winning on this level will mean a more secure future for the right to choose...
...religious right planned to use abortion as a wedge issue. At sessions to form the Moral Majority, Paul Weyrich said the movement should "focus attention on the abortion issue, because it would split the Democratic Party, while hardly affecting the Republican vote." Paradoxically, the very decision they hated -- Roe v. Wade -- gave these political operatives the cover they needed: so long as that ruling was in effect, Republicans could give lip service to a "right to life" without facing immediate consequences. But with Roe endangered, the prospect of legislatures' having to debate the whole matter over again is daunting...
...clerk-did-it theory works this way: Rehnquist believed that Kennedy would join him, Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Byron White to produce a majority decision repudiating Roe. But while Rehnquist was writing what he thought would be a majority opinion along those lines, Kennedy was persuaded to switch by his clerk Dorf, perhaps with the collusion of Souter's clerk Rubin...
...third, less Machiavellian theory might hold the key. Kennedy may indeed have disparaged Roe three years ago, before Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall. But faced with the possibility that Roe might really be overturned -- and the social tumult that would ensue -- he instinctively pulled back from the brink...