Opinion: Roe was very bad for America. The court gives us a chance to reset

By virtue of those precedents, the Supreme Court imposed on the nation an extreme, one-size fits all regulatory regime for abortion of its own invention, without any justification in the text, history or tradition of the Constitution.

It channeled all of the political energy of the abortion debate into proxy battles for control of the Supreme Court that played out in a toxic fashion in presidential and senatorial campaigns, reaching a shameful apex in judicial confirmation hearings, which have become a no-holds-barred blood sport where politicians don't merely argue, they seek to destroy the nominee as a person.

The Supreme Court took the issue of abortion out of the political, legislative and executive spheres (except for minor ancillary side constraints such as parental involvement laws, informed consent provisions, waiting periods and limits on especially controversial methods of abortion).

And it did so under a notoriously weak interpretive analysis that even liberals like American legal scholar Laurence Tribe once recognized as unpersuasive.

So for nearly 50 years, those on opposite sides of the issue haven't really had to learn how to talk to one another in a serious way about how to find a path forward for the law and policy of abortion -- we simply did what the Supreme Court told us insofar as we could tell what that was.