The leaked Supreme Court memo suggesting that Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion might be overturned has been received with the anticipated deep division and controversy.
But might it actually be the beginning of an end to the abortion wars that have roiled American politics since the 1973 court ruling? The history of another issue that once deeply divided the nation — the religious versus the secular, Catholics versus Protestants, urban versus rural — suggests just that possibility, thanks to the safety valve provided by American federalism and localism.
The parallel worth considering is Prohibition, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which authorized Congress to “prohibit” the sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages. Today, the idea that what was known as the temperance movement would be politically potent and dramatically successful seems hard to believe. But so it was — as compellingly described in Daniel Okrent’s history, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. What had been a matter of states’ rights and local discretion became, with a change in the Constitution, a uniform policy for the nation.
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