America’s two solitudes are not the same as Canada’s
America’s two solitudes are at it again. The mother of all culture wars has reared its ugly head after the leak of a draft U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the 1973 ruling that established a woman’s right to an abortion. What produced shrieks of horror and dystopian warnings right out ofamong some Americans was cheered by others as a long-awaited deliverance. As if the country wasn’t divided enough already.
Former president Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – were each confirmed by a bare majority of senators. Their appointments shifted the balance on the top court in ways that most Americans are only beginning to appreciate. But it would be wrong to suggest it’s all or only about politics.
That is the difference between Roe and the 1988 ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada that struck down this country’s former abortion law. The top court here ruled that the Criminal Code provision on abortion violated Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects the security of the person. The Charter was only six years old then, so there was no ambiguity about the legal basis for the court’s decision. Roe v.
It is possible, if not probable, that the U.S. court’s final ruling will turn out to be much narrower in scope than Justice Alito’s draft suggests. The case before the court involves a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy; Roe established the right to an abortion for any reason up to the point of the viability of the fetus outside the womb, which is currently around 23 weeks.
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