I don’t agree with the casual disregard for the complexity of the abortion debate, but this article is accurate in identifying the way in which the focus on trans rights is undermining women’s issues.

Why would a conservative clerk leak it? A conservative would have nothing to gain and everything to lose, but a leftist would calculate the possibility of the justices being physically intimidated into changing the final draught. The author must surely appreciate this?

Hilary Clinton is a blood thirsty war monger – that’s why people didn’t vote for her. Also her brand of uber capitalist, corporate feminism leaves most women behind. She’s a creature of the system that she has propped up so assiduously since she first entered politics.

I believe in abortion rights, but roe vs wade is clearly nonsensical. There’s nothing about abortion in the constitution so the Supreme Court should have left it to the States or federal politicians. Overturning it doesn’t overturn abortion rights in those states that already have those rights anyway.

I always come to Unherd to put contentious news into context and to give a strongly argued and relevant perspective.Hadley’s article does just that. As a man i support women in this epic battle for rights i just wish leftist poseurs like PP and the ACLU would do the same.

Shame the Guardian doesn’t understand the damage they’ve done by legitisimising this nonsense.

You’re a great writer, but I’ll always hate the Guardian for missing every opportunity to be the voice of reason in the MSM.

But the Guardian was founded to protect the interests of the middle class and I guess that’s its priority.

An ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, asserted that everything changes, and (I paraphrase) into the opposite of itself.
So attitudes towards abortion, or female bodily autonomy, or just about any ‘past victory’, are not fixed for all time. There will always be pushback, and pushback keeps going.

“Democrats can and should rail against how nutty the Republican Party has become in the past four decades”
Not half as nutty as the Democrats who have been the cheerleaders and useful idiots of the Woke movement.

I can see why Hadley Freeman won the columnist of the year award – she makes her points very well.

Australia is also a federal state and each of the states has reformed its abortion laws at various times. Perhaps if we were divided into 50 states there would be some smaller ones that were reluctant to decriminalise abortion. Thankfully the states are large enough that ‘mainstream’ opinion carries the day – though I well remember the fight in W.A. to get decriminalisation.

Looks like the U.S. may be in for an interesting battle between states’ rights and human rights – or who decides what human rights includes.

So what? Feminism turned its back on child welfare and development. What goes around comes around.

The Constitution does refer to women’s rights. Look at the XIX Amendment. But nowhere else in the Constitution do the words “man/men” or “woman/women” exist. Instead “person/s” and “citizen/s” are used.

This article fails to connect the dots on women’s rights vs. transactivist wins. WHY are government agencies allowing “penised people” in women’s prisons at the same time as destroying reproductive rights for “people with uteruses?”

The problem with Roe v Wade is that 9 senior lawyers made the decision, and made it on flimsy grounds. It was never going to win acceptance across the whole of American society. Better to let the People decide. Have a referendum or amend the constitution.

Hadley Freeman is right to raise the alarm about the erosion of women’s rights in a gender confused world. We can salute the women who have done so despite the vilification that followed (JK Rowling, Kathleen Stock et al.). However, it is important not to catastrophise the possible repeal of Roe v. Wade – abortion law will be decided democratically state by state. Any woman seeking an abortion in a state which restricts access will cross state lines. If she lacks the money, pro-abortion groups will fund her costs, just as they did 50 years ago. Pro-abortionists also need to engage properly with the argument, and demonstrate factually why a human life is not at stake when an abortion is conducted. And why is abortion discussed as if it was the only method of birth control? Safe effective contraceptives are freely available.

Right from the day Roe Vs Wade was first pronounced it was controversial. Let’s face it, it was a very odd interpretation.
Over the years people have been warned again and again that abortion needs it’s own federal law, if not it’s place in the Constitution itself.
And yet 50 years on there is still no such federal protection. Who’s fault is that?
And while we’re here, let’s remind ourselves that the European Court of Human Rights does not explicitly protect abortion either, and at least two European states do not allow it.

“Democrats can and should rail against how nutty the Republican Party has become in the past four decades, especially on social issues like abortion.”
I am confused.
How is rejecting the killing of innocent children nutty? Why is it nutty to insist on a God-given “right to life” (even if others would deny that right) ….or to suggest that Little Suzie, created, living and growing within her mother’s womb, possesses her own right to ‘bodily autonomy’ which supersedes her mother’s?
How is it nutty to refuse to accept the contention that Suzie’s Mom is endowed by her Creator with an unalienable right to murder her own children (as long as they’re not ‘too’ old, depending on GPS location)…until she decides, as per Ilyse Hogue, that it’s the ‘right time’ to let them live?
We speak of ‘reproductive freedom’ and ‘control over reproduction’ ; we might as well speak of growing wings and flying. These things are myths. They don’t exist; they’ve never existed.. If we had ‘control over reproduction’ there would be no infertile couples….no unwanted pregnancies; our control over reproduction would not allow such things. If we had ‘reproductive freedom’ we could freely decide to become pregnant or not…but we can’t. The only thing we CAN control…the only thing we have a right to control…the choice we are, indeed, absolutely free to make is the choice to have or not have sex with the potential father of our children…to use or not use birth control. But once the choice to have intercourse is made, whether or not a new life is created is entirely up to God (fate, the universal whim, call it whatever). Whether sperm merges with egg is entirely uncontrollable.
When it happens, a human life is made.
The author suggests the issue here is ‘who has control over women’s bodies’…and she’s right. Women do and should have control over their bodies. They do and should control with whom their bodies have sex and to what extent they protect their bodies with birth control. But when, within that body, a new life is created….the question then becomes, ‘who has control over that child’s body’ — who speaks for Suzie — and what are the requirements & expectations that society imposes on every parent to protect & enable that child’s healthy development?
But still, in the midst of this Progressive post-leak hysteria, we must remember: if & when SCOTUS overturns Roe v Wade that is not the banning of abortion. It is simply the return of the abortion issue to the States and to each of our elected representatives who are empowered to make abortion laws. IF, as is hammered relentlessly within the media, the ‘majority’ of Americans favor the in-utero murder of children, then — at the state level — the right to do such an unthinkable thing will be validated. If the majority object to that barbaric practice, then it will be forbidden.
Is that not reasonable and just to allow that question to be decided by 330M Americans and not 5 Clowns in Robes?