A LOT of people are really worked up about how outrageous and extreme the new anti-abortion legislation in Alabama, Georgia and Ohio is. Even among pro-birthers, people are saying it's too much, and that there ought to be exceptions allowing abortion in cases of abortion or incest. For a while, I thought the extremist legislators were severely miscalculating, taking for granted that the 5-4 Republican majority on the Supreme Court was eagerly awaiting any old opportunity to overthrow Roe v. Wade.
But now I've realized the method to this madness. The bits in the law that are getting people the most upset are absolutely deliberate, and they're meant to make everyone angry, and in particular they are meant to fail at the Supreme Court. Why?
It's ablative armour to the bill. They hope that everyone will scream loudly enough that the law doesn't even provide exemptions for rape and incest, that nobody will bother to raise the more fundamental objection that banning abortion for anyone is and remains contrary to the principles articulated in Roe v. Wade. They hope that the Supreme Court will strike down the law citing only the fact that they don't include exemptions, and then they will immediately turn around and "fix" the problem by passing an identical version of the law with a couple of exemptions included, thus satisfying the Court's objections to the first version.
I'm not sure how to defeat this strategy, if the Republicans on the court are determined to go along with it, but I hope the lawyers arguing for the pro-choice side focus their arguments on the substance of the ban itself, and don't get baited into focusing on the parts they don't intend to keep in the final bill anyway.
