News emerging from the United States on Monday night has, expectedly, triggered another round of intense debate on a most divisive issue — abortion.

According to online publication Politico, it has obtained a draft opinion that suggests the US Supreme Court has voted to overturn the landmark Roe v Wade case that legalised abortion in that country almost five decades ago.

“The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision — Planned Parenthood v Casey — that largely maintained the right,” the Politico story stated.

According to the publication, the draft, written by Justice Samuel Alito and circulated inside the court, states that “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.”

Politico also reported the draft as saying: “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled… It is time to heed the constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

On Tuesday, the Associated Press (AP) reported that US Chief Justice John Roberts had confirmed the draft’s authenticity and promised an investigation into the source of the leak.

The AP has told us that if the court goes with the draft position, it will lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states in America and could have huge ramifications for this year’s mid-term elections.

We would not be surprised if, given the close relationship between Washington and Kingston, as well as the fact that a large number of Jamaicans live in the US, a revival of the abortion debate in that country sparks similar discussion here.

Should that occur, we would be again engaging in what we believe is a never-ending debate that would most likely enter the realm of religion, thus reducing the possibility of arriving at a consensus on whether abortion is right or wrong.

We reiterate our position that we have no wish to tell any woman what to do with her body beyond suggesting to her that she does what is in her best interest and that of the foetus she is bearing because that is an awesome responsibility, whatever decision she makes.

One of the problems that, we believe, has been hobbling the anti-abortion side of the debate is that it does not go much beyond the insistence that the foetus should be allowed to come to full term. There are very few on that side of the debate who give serious thought to what will happen to that baby when it is born.

Additionally, there appears to be some amount of acceptance among anti-abortionists that in instances when a woman becomes pregnant as a result of the most heinous crime of rape, she should ignore that trauma and have that baby.

It is, as we said, a most difficult decision for any woman to make.

This is one issue that will continue to divide us even if, as we have suggested before, the matter is put to a referendum that provide an adequate indication of how the Jamaican family feels about abortion. And even after any such vote, the issue will still be hotly debated.

Families and societies have been ripped apart by this matter. Hopefully, we can avoid that.