Wednesday, November 02, 2005

This is the one to filibuster

Dr. B., as usual, hits the nail on the head:

What's going on here is what Scott ... calls the "death by a thousand cuts." I call it the difference between rights in theory and rights in practice. That is, we could end up with a situation in which, theoretically, you still have the right to an abortion--that is, Roe v. Wade hasn't been fully overturned. But in practice, and practice is what matters, you don't, or can't, because all these individual little delays and hassles and inconveniences, none of which, in and of itself, constitutes what Alito considers an "undue burden" on some generic, middle-class, well-off, happily-married imaginary woman--all these little delays add up into a *collective* burden that means that abortions are inaccessible to women who need them. What you can practically do matters more than what you can theoretically do: pregnancies aren't theoretical, women aren't theoretical, abortions aren't theoretical. It is the very fact that each individual woman's individual situation is different that makes this whole "undue burden" issue so important. "Undue burden" for whom? What constitutes a burden to me might not constitute a burden to you; what isn't burdensome to you or me might be impossible for the woman down the street.

Go read the whole thing.