The anti-abortion side’s strategy has focused on changing the makeup of the court

 

The anti-abortion side’s strategy has focused on changing the makeup of the court.

the course of the lawsuit, Mississippi and its allies argued more vehemently than before, and two high court proponents of abortion rights either retired or passed away.

The state’s original defense was that the court’s abortion rulings could be followed while still upholding its law.

The 15-week measure was enacted by then-Gov. Phil Bryant in March 2018, when Justices Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were still a part of a five-justice majority that was primarily pro-abortion rights.

Kennedy departed in the early summer and was succeeded a few months later by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In lower federal courts, the Mississippi statute was rejected.

But the state always intended to appeal to the highest court in the land. It didn’t even request a hearing before a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which in December 2019 declared the statute unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court was prepared to hear the state’s appeal by the beginning of September 2020.

The court set the case for discussion at the justices’ secret meeting on September 29. Ginsburg passed away in the interim weeks, though, and Barrett was swiftly nominated and approved without the support of a single Democrat.

The stage had been set, despite the fact that it took the court another six months to decide to hear the case.

The fundamental focus of Mississippi’s position had shifted by the time it submitted its main written argument to the court in the summer; it was now requesting that Roe and Casey be completely overruled.

The first indication that the court would be open to eliminating the right to an abortion came in the late summer, when the justices split 5-4 to allow Texas to enforce a ban on the operation at about six weeks, before some women even realize they are pregnant.

That argument centered on the peculiar way the law was written, how it could be legally contested, and the fact that private persons, not government agents, were responsible for enforcing it.

For the three liberal justices, however, Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in a vehement dissent that their conservative colleagues had declined to strike down “a flagrantly unconstitutional law” that “flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents.” Roberts was one of the contrarians.

The court again declined to do so in December following fresh arguments over whether or not to prohibit the Texas statute known as S.B. 8, again by a 5-4 vote. In a partial dissent, Roberts stated that “S. B. 8’s clear purpose and actual effect has been to annul this Court’s judgements.”

Trump’s three nominees for the Supreme Court skillfully avoided questioning during their Senate confirmation hearings about their voting intentions in various issues, including those involving abortion.

However, even though Democrats and proponents of abortion rights believed that if Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were approved, they would vote to restrict access to abortion, at least one Republican senator had a different opinion.

Based on private conversations she had with Gorsuch and Kavanaugh when they were candidates for the Supreme Court, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine projected that they wouldn’t support vacating the abortion cases.

Prior to her appointment as a federal judge in 2017, Barrett was one of the most outspoken opponents of abortion in the legal academy. In addition to opposing “abortion on demand,” she signed a newspaper ad protecting “the right to life from fertilization to natural death.”

She was a part of anti-abortion organizations at Notre Dame University, where she taught law. She pledged to put aside her personal opinions when making decisions.

While this was going on, Trump had stated as a candidate that any justices he appointed to the court would ‘automatically’ vote to overturn Roe.