"Roe v. Wade and its progeny are not, of course, responsible for the degradation of politics that has become the natural counterpart of the institution of judicial review, its high-minded justifications, and the reverence we now accord it. It does, though, exemplify it. When the Court speaks of the hallowed right to privacy in which it locates abortion, it speaks of the sanctity of marriage and family, of individual liberty, of equality or dignity, of respect, and of the great and deepest mysteries of life. It speaks of the constituents of individual identity, and of what is most important to a well-led life, of the grand promises of the Fourteenth Amendment, of the importance of precedent to political and social order, of the needs of all of us to be free of a “jurisprudence of doubt,” and of the importance of consistency, integrity, and moral principle in decision making and in our law. The contrast between what the Court and commentators say when speaking of this right, and what abortion rights advocates say in the public sphere when defending or addressing the need for legal abortion, could not be starker. When advocates speak of abortion in the public sphere and outside the courts, they do not talk, for the most part, about a “jurisprudence of doubt” or the importance of precedent or of principled judicial decision making, of liberty, dignity, or even equality. Rather, they most often speak of women’s bodies. They speak of the dangers to women’s health that are posed by many pregnancies. They speak of the lives that have been lost to illegal abortion. They talk a lot about hemorrhaging, and of women and girls bleeding to death in botched back-alley abortions. They speak of fear and terror. They speak of lives shortened, or narrowed, or rendered mean and uncompromising by dangerous pregnancies, or too many unplanned pregnancies, or too many children, or too much mothering. They speak of shattered dreams, or girls with low or no expectations for their own futures. They often speak of abusive stepfamily members, of domestic violence, and child rape. They speak of intentional, deeply wanted pregnancies gone wrong: they talk about diseased fetuses, miscarriages, and tragic choices. They talk about stillbirths and life-threatening complications. They speak of the earthy, present, demanding, felt, fought-over need of women to control their bodies and fate."