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Much of the debate over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to succeed Anthony M. Kennedy on the Supreme Court will center on the fate of Roe v. Wade and the future of abortion rights in America. Nervous champions of the right to choose recall President Trump’s promise to only nominate “pro-life” judges to the court and marked Kavanaugh’s selection with a protest in front of the court. If Roe is overturned, the legality of abortion will be decided by individual states. How soon this might happen, and how many states would ban abortion, is not clear. (Carole Joffe, 7/10)

Fortunately I wasn’t drinking coffee on the train into work last week when I heard Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, say in a New York Times podcast that support for Roe v. Wade is “something like a 51-49” issue in America.The spittake would have drenched my fellow commuters and earned me a rough ejection at the next station. Susan Collins! The moderate supporter of abortion rights and a potential swing vote in the process to confirm President Donald Trump’s choice to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy to the U.S. Supreme Court! So wrong about public opinion! (Eric Zorn, 7/11)

We need to mobilize in the states. For some reason, many abortion rights advocates have had a hard time grasping that the state level is where most abortion restrictions happen. If Roe is overturned, each state will be free to make its own laws. Every state election and every legislative session will become a battlefield. We need to get ready by electing legislators and governors now who support women’s reproductive rights. As of now, 17 states have laws that will ban or greatly restrict abortion the minute Roe is overturned. Only nine have laws to protect the right to an abortion regardless of Roe. We need to educate people today on the abortion politics of their state. If we wait until Roe is overturned, it will be too late. (Katha Pollitt, 7/10)

 Last night, while nominating Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Trump attempted to erase all the times he promised to appoint justices who would, in his words, “automatically” overturn Roe v. Wade — referring to the Constitution and the law, and denying that he asked Kavanaugh about his personal political beliefs. Maybe that’s because he’s finally listening to his staff. Maybe it’s because he read the polls showing that 70 percent of Americans believe abortion should be safe and legal, as it has been for 45 years. But I’m not buying Trump’s sales pitch on Kavanaugh, and neither should any U.S. Senator. (Dawn Laguens, 7/10)

Now that President Donald Trump has nominated Brett Kavanaugh to fill the United States Supreme Court seat recently vacated by Anthony Kennedy, an enormous amount of both hand-wringing and rejoicing (depending on one’s perspective) has begun with regard to the fate of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that fabricated a constitutional “right” to abortion. Much of this reaction is seriously misplaced, however, because both supporters and opponents of abortion rights misunderstand the meaning of Roe, and thus the implications of reversing it. (Kenneth Craycraft, 7/10)

On the other side of the aisle, liberals have never mustered the same level of discipline and far-sighted strategy, even though the court’s rulings also have direct implications for goals that liberals and Democrats claim to hold dear. Abortion and guns, to take just two, directly affect the lives of millions of Americans. A sincere commitment to upholding reproductive rights or enacting sane gun control — or protecting the environment, or upholding civil rights, or any number of other good causes — would require the same strategic approach to the judiciary as conservatives have shown, and the same willingness to subordinate short-term disagreements to long-term goals. (7/10)

Democracy happens in the trenches. Those officials make millions of decisions about the world we build together. Most don’t ever come near the Supreme Court. Voters must start caring more about these elections. Turnout in presidential election years hovers between 50 and 60 percent: an appalling baseline. Some (but not all) of that is due to unjustified restrictions on the franchise. But participation drops like a rock for other elections, and that’s difficult to blame on barriers alone. A Gallup poll two weeks ago asked whether voters were “absolutely certain” to vote in this fall’s midterm elections — and got the second most feeble response in 60 years.The lack of attention to downballot elections is part of what makes Justice Kennedy’s retirement so massively meaningful. But perhaps the fight over his successor will help progressives realize the urgency of fighting on other fronts as well. (Justin Levitt, 7/10)

As Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination tees up another national debate about reproductive rights, is it too much to ask that abortion’s impact on the black population be part of the discussion? When the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973, polling showed that blacks were less likely than whites to support abortion. Sixties-era civil rights activists like Fannie Lou Hamer and Whitney Young had denounced the procedure as a form of genocide. Jesse Jackson called abortion “murder” and once told a black newspaper in Chicago that “we used to look for death from the man in the blue coat and now it comes in a white coat.” (Jason L. Riley, 7/10)