The hidden benefits of a challenge to Roe

I've had many political discussions with friends recently and invariably the topic of Roe v. Wade comes up. Many of my generation, in our early 30s, consider Roe one of the pillars of the modern American liberal ethos and feel that with the recent Bush appointments to the Supreme Court, it is just a question of when, not if, Roe is overturned. And we see South Dakota's recent passage of legislation banning nearly all abortions as the first step today in the process of challenging and possibly overturning Roe.

Regardless of one's views on Roe v. Wade, I believe the challenge to Roe will have a significantly positive, unintended consequence for the next generation of Americans, and for U.S. politics.

Roe v. Wade has generated a hailstorm of controversy since the Supreme Court's ruling in 1973. The ruling created a benchmark by which people are measured across the political and social spectrum. Roe is arguably the most important litmus test for aspiring Supreme Court justices. It shapes the outcomes of numerous local, state and national elections. And it has added two phrases to the popular lexicon that beget automatic, and polar, judgments: "pro-life" and "pro-choice."

This polarity, unfortunately, is invariably transferred to party platforms — a Democratic Party candidate almost always is assumed to be "pro-choice," while a Republican Party candidate is almost always assumed to be "pro-life."

But beyond this instant labeling, with which I am so uncomfortable, if Roe is overturned, it will be a pivotal day for American society as individual states begin to consider legislation either limiting abortion or keeping the status quo based on the political and religious inclinations of their legislatures.

There is the real fear that the United States will start to fragment along social, political, economic and religious lines — where states like California or Washington probably will not deviate much from the status quo, but South Dakota and Mississippi might. Social policy would take on the hues of blue and red states, mapped in a checkerboard of state boundaries.

Over the long period since Roe, my generation has lived complacently; we knew the Supreme Court's ruling had set a boundary that the state legislatures could not cross. But with this complacency, we lost an interest in basic participation in local and state social issues — Lincoln's ideal of government by the people and for the people.

With the comfort afforded by Roe, I know many of my brightest and most talented friends often ignored participating in local and state politics (me, too), with the exception of fiscal issues. We focused instead on interesting national and international issues. We were relatively confident that local and state measures somehow would follow a centrist path that would do us no great harm.

The escalating challenge to Roe v. Wade — with the spotlight potentially falling on local legislatures if the high court overturns its 1973 decision — hopefully will shake many of us out of our contentment and force us to realize we need to raise participation in grass-roots democracy — of the people, for the people, by the people — regardless of our political affiliations.

This participation in more-local grass-roots democracy can take many forms — involvement in political, civic, or volunteer organizations, to name a few. The most basic starting point is to take an interest and vote on local issues.

Our uniquely American flavor of democracy, with laws shaped primarily by elected officials at the local and state levels, confers a tremendous amount of responsibility on individual voters to take part.

While I'm personally torn by the issues related to Roe v. Wade — I believe in a woman's right to choose, but the choice to have an abortion is not something to be celebrated — I worry about how the upcoming challenges to Roe could further divide our fractured country.

But those challenges could also produce a beneficial effect for future generations of our country — one that goes far beyond Roe v. Wade.

It is that, at long last, we may shed the complacency we've developed over our own democracy.

Kartik Raghavan works in technology and volunteers with various community and political organizations. He has lived in Seattle since graduating from Dartmouth College in 1996.