The news came from the pro-abortion "Center for Reproductive Rights". The Center put out a press release with less than one month to go before the Presidential election, no doubt to try to shake up an alarm against Bush and get out the vote for Kerry.

The Center laments that 18 states already have pre-Roe laws on the books that could go into effect immediately, should the states choose to enforce them. Others have drafted laws that were struck down since Roe, but which could be enforced should Roe go the way of the dodo. Other states have either placed laws on the books to protect abortion practice, or have legislatures which lean toward abortion which would likely continue to protect abortion practices in their states.

The 21 states considered likely to ban abortion in some way were: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The nine considered somewhat likely to restrict abortion practice in some ways: Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.

The 20 most likely protect abortion practices: Alaska, California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.

The Center has prepared a guide to what the legal situation would be. The state-by-state analysis begins on page 27.

How likely is the Supreme Court to actually overturn Roe? Your guess is as good as mine, but I consider it unlikely. The abortion advocates in Congress would thoroughly Bork any Bush nominee who wasn't in lockstep on Roe. But life is full of surprises. And it never hurts to be prepared.

We can predict pretty well what the abortion advocates' response would be to an overturn of Roe. We'd get a two-pronged approach:

1. A rerun of the situation we got when the Hyde Amendment went into effect, banning Federal funding of elective abortions. The vultures would start circling, hoping for a horrible criminal abortion death they could exploit, the way they exploited the death of Rosie Jiminez.

2. Sad stories of how horribly difficult women will find it to obtain abortions when their own states ban or restrict abortion.

Let's look at the first prong, and how we can be ready for it. Next

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