Slate’s excellent legal writer Dahlia Lithwick’s article “The Death of Roe v. Wade” is both interesting and frightening.

The famous and, for many, infamous Supreme Court decision from 1973 approving the right to abortion has long been an integral part of the American debate. It is praised and criticized and continues to play a leading role in every election campaign: “pro-choice” vs. “pro-life.”

Lithwick’s take is that Roe v. Wade is, in fact, already dead. It is no longer, in reality, the law of the land, even though no one, neither supporters nor opponents, say so out loud. She points to the many hundreds of new laws and regulations in the States all of which restrict abortion rights. Most of them are illegal, but the abortion opponents ignore this and continue to chip away at Roe v. Wade.

However, to pick a legal fight with all these new laws and measures is risky, according to abortion supporters, for what happens if this legal battle ends up in the U.S. Supreme Court, where the Court’s conservative majority could overturn Roe v. Wade? Is that risk worth taking?