EDITORIAL: A new national debate over abortion

May 19-- May 19--All recent signs suggest America's decades-long fight over abortion rights is coming to a head. There is a chance, though many legal experts think it is slim, that the fight may culminate with a dramatic decision on Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020, in the middle of an election year.

The state of Alabama launched a shot across the bow of pro-choice advocates last week. Its state legislators passed a law that bans nearly all abortions, even in cases where the woman is a victim of rape or incest. Abortions that protect the life of the mother are among only a few exceptions. Doctors caught performing the procedure could receive prison terms of 99 years.

The Alabama law, signed by Gov. Kay Ivey, represents the most direct challenge yet of Roe, the landmark Supreme Court case in 1973 that legalized abortion. The law goes beyond the flurry of "heartbeat" bills passed or debated in other states across the South and elsewhere. Those measures outlaw abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can be as early as six weeks and before many women know they are pregnant.

The abortion fight has heated up in North Carolina, too, where Republican lawmakers are trying to pass a bill that makes it illegal for a medical provider to kill a baby that is born alive and has survived an abortion attempt. Democrats have countered the measure is unnecessary in that such has never happened in the state, that North Carolina already has laws against infanticide, and that doctors are already regulated by medical boards. One Democratic senator, Don Davis of Pitt County, joined Republicans to be the key vote for the Senate to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's veto. The bill faces an uncertain future in the House, where Republicans will need Democrats again to counter Cooper's veto.

As for Alabama's approach, even some conservatives have come out against it, to include Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the Rev. Pat Robertson, a longtime pro-life advocate who said the law "has gone too far." Among Robertson's concerns is that the law's extreme nature will weaken it as a tool to undermine Roe.

And make no mistake: Roe is the big prize at stake for both sides of the debate.

The aim of Alabama's law is to force the Supreme Court's hand in taking up the matter. Some Alabama lawmakers have said as much, acknowledging the law is unconstitutional. Conservatives are optimistic that in the decades since Roe, they finally have a mix of justices that could overturn the precedent. They note that President Donald Trump has appointed two conservatives, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, while the court through retirement lost Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Republican-appointed swing voter who would join the liberals in upholding Roe.

Justice Stephen Breyer from the liberal wing appeared to sound an alarm recently, when he warned his fellow justices they might be too willing to overturn precedent in their rulings. In his dissent in a tax case, he wrote that overturning precedent should be pursued only in special circumstances. He cited a 1992 ruling that upheld abortion as one law deserving of judicial restraint. Court-watchers wondered whether Breyer knew something about his colleagues' intentions toward Roe, the principle of which was upheld in the 1992 ruling.

There are others, however, who say the court will not be ready to act on Roe v. Wade -- at least not yet, and not in such a sweeping fashion. Richard Garnett, a Notre Dame law professor and critic of Roe, told the Los Angeles Times that the court under Chief Justice John Roberts might prefer a more incremental approach.

"It is not clear that the current justices who have expressed doubts about the correctness of decisions like Roe ... will want to take up a case that squarely presents the question of whether these decisions should be overruled," he said. "Instead, they might prefer to first consider less sweeping abortion regulations."

Then, too, while many pro-life activists consider the court as having five solid votes against Roe, the body's actual votes so far present more of mixed picture. In December, Roberts and Kavanaugh both joined the four liberal justices in turning back a case that would have allowed states to exclude Planned Parenthood and other organizations that provide abortions from federal Medicaid money. In February, Roberts joined the four liberals in blocking a law in Louisiana that abortion-rights proponents said would have left the state with just one doctor allowed to perform abortions. Kavanaugh, in dissent, said the law should have been allowed to go forward to gauge whether it would have had the negative effect activists feared.

If the court is sending mixed messages on abortion, so is the public.

Polling by CNN shows a majority, 58 percent, favors keeping abortion always or mostly legal, while 37 percent feel otherwise. Yet in many states, including in North Carolina, voters elect by a majority Republicans, who make explicit their opposition to abortion and often seek to limit the procedure through legislation.

We seem to be entering uncharted waters in this nearly 50-year debate over abortion since Roe, at a tumultuous and divisive time in our history when the majority of our elected leaders -- in both parties -- act as if they are completely incapable of reasoned debate. It is trench warfare in Washington, and in so many of our state capitals, where so many of our politicians have sworn allegiance to party over country.

This, we fear, is a dangerous environment for a renewed national debate over abortion. Too much is at stake.

So we ask you, the voters, and our elected leaders to educate yourselves on this issue. Listen to all sides. Talk to women. Talk to people of faith.

Because no matter what happens, another Supreme Court ruling will not settle the debate any more than Roe did in 1973.

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