Anyone who thinks the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision won’t make much difference might consider the following comments by Jia Tolentino in a New Yorker Special Report dated June 24:

“Anyone who can get pregnant must now face the reality that half the country is in the hands of legislators who believe that your personhood and autonomy are conditional–who believe that, if you are impregnated by another person, under any circumstance, you have a legal and moral duty to undergo pregnancy, delivery, and, in all likelihood, two decades or more of caregiving, no matter the permanent and potentially devastating consequences for your body, your mind, your family, your ability to put food on the table, your plans, your aspirations, your life. …

We have entered an era of widespread state surveillance and criminalization…of anyone who comes into meaningful contact with a pregnancy that does not end in a healthy birth.”

One example: in prohibition states, any pregnancy loss can now potentially be investigated as a crime.

There will be an invasive interest in differentiating between miscarriage and abortion. Physicians will decline to treat women who are in the midst of miscarriages for fear that the treatment could be classified as abortion.

This is just one consequence of this far-reaching decision by this conservative Supreme Court. We must vote in November for representatives who will restore Roe v. Wade by codifying it into law.