Scare Tactic? What Scare Tactic?

Ms. Magazine has difficultly coming up with a good reason for why abortion should stay legal so they've resorted to disdainful scare tactics in this "Urgent Report":

If Roe v. Wade — last affirmed by a narrow 5-4 Supreme Court ruling — is reversed, legal dominion over abortion reverts to the states. Many of today's state legislatures would ban abortion or even make it a criminal act.

Next, the radical right would probably push for limiting availability of contraceptives — first for teenagers, then for single women. Finally, they might try to withhold certain types of contraception from married women.

In this article I'm informed that, "The Griswold v. Connecticut decision protects the right of married women to practice contraception and to secure access to legal and reliable reproductive-health services. It later provided the foundation for expanding privacy protections to encompass abortion. And those are two of the critical protections now endangered by the potential change of just one justice in the U.S. Supreme Court." (emphasis mine)

You heard it at Ms. Magazine first, if one justice is changed you can say good-bye to your condoms and birth control pills. If Justice Stevens dies and is replaced by a right-winger then our society will be turned upset down. Women will average 12 to 15 kids, the police will have cameras in your bedroom, and society as we know it will be destroyed. One justice. That's all it takes.

More propaganda from the article:

Roe v. Wade, adopted by a comfortable 7-2 majority of the Court, extended privacy protections to early terminations of unwanted pregnancy.

Early terminations? Just early? What's your definition of "early?" Or by "early" does the author mean earlier than when a pregnancy would naturally terminate at birth.

Considering the close call in Casey, the appointment of just one new conservative justice to the Court could threaten all constitutional protections for abortion — and perhaps for contraception, as well — thereby reversing history and sending the responsibility for regulating these practices back to politicians in state legislatures. And that's where the Comstock laws were first created so many years ago.

Oh no! All those scary state legislatures with their elected representatives might reinstate the Comstock laws and ban contraception. We can't have politicians making political decisions. Working to elect representatives and have them pass laws is too hard when we're used to judges implementing our views.

Do people like Ellen Chelser (the author) really believe this? Are the people working at Ms. Magazine really so off their rockers that they think birth control could become illegal if one justice is changed on the court?

Maybe, but I doubt it. They've realized that to drum up opposition to a Supreme Court nominee they need to portray nominees and what they might do in such a light that virtually anyone would be opposed to them. They're trying to solidify their position on abortion because it is crumbling before their eyes. The support for abortion on demand has waned to such an extent that pro-choice organizations are forced into blending abortion and birth control into a single reproductive rights smoothie which they say is impossible to separate.

"You don't favor abortion through all nine months of pregnancy? Well, what about birth control? If you lose abortion then you lose your access to the pill."

They have also backed themselves into the corner by acting like only 5 justices ("a razor thin majority") support Roe when they are well aware that 6 justices support upholding Roe.

And all this rests on the shoulders of just one new justice.

The thinking of the abortion crowd regarding Justice Anthony Kennedy (one of the imaginary "4") is so insane. He votes to uphold Nebraska's ban on partial-birth abortion and now he's going to vote in favor of not only overturning Roe v. Wade and but vote to overturn Griswold? Simply laughable.