There are no easy answers in the abortion debate. Passions run high, and with good reason. But wherever you stand in the abortion debate, one thing seems clear. America needs one law on abortion, not 50 state laws or 500 local laws. Abortion has been more or less legal in the United States since 1973, but it is more legal in some states and places than in others. Is abortion legal if women are harassed going into and coming out of abortion clinics? Is abortion legal if a woman has to travel to another county or state to find a doctor who will see her? Is abortion legal if safe, quality abortion care is not available at all? Whatever the balance between a woman’s right to an abortion and society’s interest in her fetus should not depend on where a woman happens to live, work, or seek health care. Localism in government administration is a fine principle, but localism in official morality is not. One nation indivisible must have a policy on abortion that can accommodate 300 million or more different opinions without trampling on the rights and needs of women, their fetuses, and their families.

National abortion law currently rests on the Constitution as interpreted by a series of Supreme Court decisions, most famously the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. The Constitutional basis for the right to abortion found in Roe v. Wade is built on the thin reed of the 14th Amendment, passed in 1868 to prevent states from reintroducing new forms of slavery. The 14th Amendment stipulates that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” from which has been implied a general right to privacy, from which has been implied a right to privacy in pregnancy, from which has been implied a right to abortion. This is good so far as it goes, but it is hardly a secure footing on which to base such a basic human right as reproductive self-determination.

The problem is: If we had a national abortion law, what would it be? For most of the last 40 years the mood in Congress has been decidedly reactionary.