每天一篇经济学人 | Rights and wrongs 是非曲直（202...

Rights and wrongs

是非曲直

It was hardly a surprise. The Supreme Court’s move to overturn Roe v Wade, the decision in 1973 that American women had a constitutional right to abortion, had been expected since a draft majority opinion was leaked in early May. And drama from the court was almost inevitable after Donald Trump seated three justices, giving it a 6-3 conservative supermajority instead of the 5-4 balance, with a swing vote in the middle, that had prevailed since the 1970s. Even so, when the ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organisation came on June 24th, it was a shattering blow to those, like this newspaper, who believe in the right to abortion. Chief Justice John Roberts, who cautioned against a “dramatic step”, could not prevent the court from withdrawing a right that Americans had relied on for nearly half a century and which a majority of them have consistently supported.

【1】shattering 毁灭性的；令人惊骇的

这并不令人意外。美国最高法院推翻1973年的罗伊诉韦德案，即美国妇女享有宪法赋予的堕胎权利。自5月初一份多数票意见草案被泄露以来，人们就预料到了这一裁决。在唐纳德·特朗普任命了三名大法官后，保守派以6比3的绝对多数赢得了最高法院，而非处于上世纪70年代以来一直占主导地位的5比4的平衡，中间有一摇摆票的情况，最高法院发生的戏剧性事件几乎不可避免。即便如此，当6月24日多布斯诉杰克逊女性健康组织案的判决出炉时，对于像本刊这样相信堕胎权利的人来说，这是一个毁灭性的打击。首席大法官约翰•罗伯茨曾警告称不要采取“戏剧性的举措”，但他无法阻止最高法院取消一项美国人依赖了近半个世纪、而且大多数美国人一直支持的权利。

The ruling is the most striking of the court’s decisions in its current term, but abortion is not the only area where it has radically tipped the scales. The justices have also loosened gun laws and eroded the separation of church and state (see United States section). If their final big verdict goes as expected, they are about to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate emissions from power plants, undermining the Biden administration’s hopes of halving climate-changing carbon-dioxide emissions by 2030. Just 25% of Americans have confidence in the court, an all-time low, according to recent Gallup polling. That has not deterred the justices from embarking on a spree of judicial activism that will further deepen cracks in America.

【1】tip the scales 起决定性作用

这一裁决是最高法院当前任期内最引人注目的裁决，但堕胎并不是它完全起决定作用的唯一领域。法官们还放宽了枪支法，废除了政教分离(见美国部分)。如果他们最终的重大裁决如预期的那样，他们将限制美国环境保护局监管发电厂排放的能力，从而破坏拜登政府在2030年前将气候变化的二氧化碳排放量减半的希望。根据最近的盖洛普民意调查，只有25%的美国人信任最高法院，这一比例创历史新低。这并没有阻止大法官们掀起一场司法激进主义的狂潮，而这将进一步加深美国的裂痕。

The impact of the abortion ruling is immediate and severe. The court has sent the matter back to the states, 13 of which have trigger laws that ban abortion or will do so soon. Women in conservative states have for years had to make long, costly journeys to find health care that in most of the rich world is available free and close to home. The sudden disappearance of abortion provision in more than a dozen states will cause the most harm among the poorest women, and those suffering complications in pregnancy (see International section). One consequence may be a further rise in America’s maternal-mortality rates, already the highest by far among rich countries.

堕胎裁决的影响是直接和严重的。最高法院已将堕胎裁决权归还给各州，其中13个州已经或即将启动禁止堕胎的法律。多年来，保守州的女性不得不长途跋涉，花费高昂的费用，才能获得在大多数发达国家免费且离家近的医疗服务。在十几个州，堕胎条款的突然消失将对最贫穷的妇女和那些在怀孕期间出现并发症的妇女造成最大的伤害。后果之一可能是美国的产妇死亡率进一步上升，目前美国的产妇死亡率已经是发达国家中最高的。

It is true that Roe rested on shaky legal arguments. This left the right it sought to enshrine open to repeated legal attack by a highly motivated minority. The resulting fight has poisoned politics and dragged the court into the partisan mire. It has also now put other cherished rights at risk. The rulings that established the rights to contraception and same-sex marriage, for example, rest partly on the same interpretation of “due process” under the 14th Amendment that underpinned the right to abortion. In his opinion last week Clarence Thomas, the most conservative justice, made it clear that he believes these are ripe for reversal.

确实，Roe案的判决建立在不可靠的法律论据上。这使得它试图保护的权利容易受到动机强烈的少数人的多次法律攻击。由此引发的争斗毒害了政治，并将法院拖入了党派纷争的泥潭。它现在也使其他宝贵的权利受到威胁。例如，保护避孕和同性婚姻权利的裁决，部分是基于支持堕胎权利的第14修正案对“正当程序”的相同解释。上周，最保守的大法官克拉伦斯•托马斯在他的观点中明确表示，他认为现在是推翻这些规定的时机。

Thankfully, America is not about to ban gay sex or same-sex marriage. Too many voters would resist any such effort, and the court does not seem to have an appetite for it. Samuel Alito, the justice who wrote the opinion for the conservative majority overturning Roe, sought to throw cold water on the idea: “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion,” he wrote. Yet Justice Alito and Justice Thomas noted in 2020 that they would like to overturn the 2015 decision that established a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Those rights no longer look quite so secure.

值得庆幸的是，美国并不打算禁止同性性行为或同性婚姻。抵制任何这样的努力的选民太多了，而且法院似乎对此也没有兴趣。法官塞缪尔·阿利托为保守派多数派撰写了推翻Roe案件的意见书，他试图给这一想法泼冷水，他在意见书中写道:“这份意见书中的任何内容都不应被理解为对与堕胎无关的先例提出质疑”。然而，阿利托法官和托马斯法官在2020年指出，他们希望推翻2015年的决定，该决定确立了同性婚姻的宪法权利。这些权利看起来不再那么安全了。

The repercussions of the court’s activism will play out over years, and the response should be calibrated accordingly. The short-term priority for defenders of abortion rights must be to help women in states where it is now banned or hard to obtain. That means support for travel to states where abortion remains legal. It also means making sure women have ready access to a method of abortion that did not exist at the time of Roe: abortion medication, which allows women to end pregnancies at home safely up to 11 weeks. The Food and drug Administration has dropped a requirement that obliged a woman to collect one of the two drugs involved from a health-care provider. But it still imposes unnecessary rules on supply of the drugs. They should go. Better access to contraception, resisting conservative efforts to restrict funding for reproductive health, would help reduce demand for abortions in a country that has a high rate of unintended pregnancies compared with many others in the West.

【1】repercussion 间接后果

最高法院激进主义的影响将持续多年，其应对措施也应相应地进行调整。堕胎权利的捍卫者短期内的优先事项必须是帮助那些在禁止堕胎或很难获得堕胎权利的州的妇女。这意味着要支持她们前往堕胎仍然合法的州。这还意味着要确保妇女能够随时获得一种在Roe案时期不存在的堕胎方法，即堕胎药物，该药物允许怀孕11周内的女性在家安全终止妊娠。美国食品和药物管理局已经取消了一项规定，即女性必须从医疗服务提供者那里获得两种药物中的一种(米非司酮，一种类固醇类的抗孕激素制剂)。但它仍然对药物供应施加了不必要的规定(比如该药品销售必须通过经过认证的药房和经过认证处方医师)。他们应取消这样的规定。与西方许多国家相比，这是在一个意外怀孕率较高的国家，在这样的国家中，更好地获得避孕药具，抵制保守的“限制给生殖健康拨款“的行动，将有助于减少堕胎需求。

The Justice Department rightly plans to push back against states that try to prevent access to abortion medication. But however tempting it may be, the Biden administration cannot use its majority to force through new national rules by ending the filibuster in the Senate (which requires 60 of the 100 votes to pass most laws), because such a move itself lacks support. Packing an expanded court with liberal justices would be no way to settle complex arguments, and could rebound badly once political power changes hands.

【1】force through 强行通过；强制执行

美国司法部计划反击那些试图阻止获得堕胎药物的州，这是理所当然的。但是，无论它多么诱人，拜登政府都不能利用其多数席位结束参议院的阻挠议事(多数法律需要100票中的60票才能通过)来强行通过新的国家规则，因为这样的举动本身缺乏支持。用自由派法官扩容最高法院并不能解决复杂的争论，而且一旦政权易手，可能会出现严重反弹。

In the medium term it would be nice to think that the justices, mindful of the court’s diminishing reputation, will start to exercise more self-restraint, including an embrace of term limits for themselves. Sadly, there is little sign that they will be in a mood for that. It will instead fall to voters to signal to conservatives that there are costs to running amok, and to influence the laws, state by state, that Better reflect what Americans really want on the thorniest issues such as abortion—which one side believes to be murder and the other a fundamental right for women. A polarised country seems poorly prepared for the sort of debate this requires. But it is what America needs, and in some of the more finely balanced states it is possible to imagine the re-emergence of the art of compromise.

【1】run amok «person, animal» 横冲直撞；«imagination» 极为活跃；«prices» 失去控制

从中期来看，考虑到最高法院声誉的下降，法官们将开始更多地自我克制，包括对自己的任期加以限制，这是一件好事。但遗憾的是，几乎没有迹象表明他们想这么做。相反，选民需要向保守派发出信号，告诉他们横冲直撞是要付出代价的，并会影响各州的法律，这些法律更好地反映了美国人在最棘手的问题上真正想要的东西，比如堕胎。一方认为堕胎是谋杀，另一方认为堕胎是妇女的基本权利。一个两极分化的国家似乎对这种需要的辩论准备不足。但这正是美国所需要的，在一些更不偏不倚的州，可以想象妥协的技能会重新出现。

Never surrenderThat points to the longer-term solution, which is federal legislation to fill the vacuum that sucks in the justices. The conventional view is that this cannot happen, because of congressional gridlock. Yet that is not necessarily so, as the gun law just signed by President Joe Biden shows—the most significant gun-control legislation in nearly three decades, passed by the Senate on the day that the Supreme Court moved in the opposite direction on guns. With sufficient pressure from voters, even Congress could, eventually, stir itself into action.

这就指向了一个更长期的解决方案，即联邦立法来扩大最高法院。传统观点认为，由于国会的僵局，这是不可能发生的。然而事实并非如此，正如乔·拜登总统刚刚签署的枪支法所显示的那样，这是近三十年来最重要的枪支管制立法，在参议院通过的同一天，最高法院却在枪支问题上采取了相反的行动。只要选民施加足够的压力，就连国会最终也会采取行动。