The US Supreme Court today overturned a precedent-setting decision that virtually legalized abortions throughout America, giving state legislatures the authority to determine whether or not to allow the practice.
The 1973 Roe v. Wade judgment was overturned by the court’s conservative majority, ending the almost 50-year-old constitutional protections for abortion.
A Mississippi statute that forbids abortions beyond 15 weeks was upheld by the court in a 6-3 decision.
With Chief Justice John Roberts writing separately to say that he would have upheld the Mississippi legislation but not gone so far as to completely invalidate the precedent, the vote was 5-4 to overturn Roe.
The Supreme Court ruled that the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which permitted abortions between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy before a fetus would be viable outside the womb, was incorrect because the U.S. Constitution does not specifically address the right to an abortion.
The central figure in the Roe v. Wade case was “Jane Roe,” a pseudonym for Norma McCorvey, a single mother who was expecting her third child and desired an abortion.
She filed a lawsuit against Henry Wade, the Dallas attorney general, alleging that the Texas statute, which made it illegal to end a pregnancy save in circumstances of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life was in danger, violated her constitutional rights.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who was appointed to the court in 2006 by George W. Bush, stated in the decision on Friday that “the Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.”
The decision implies that each state will now be able to determine whether to outlaw abortion. According to the pro-choice research organization Guttmacher Institute, 26 states are ‘certain or likely’ to outlaw abortion at this time.
It implies that women in broad swaths of America who are carrying unintended pregnancies would now have to decide between going to a different state where the procedure is still permitted and legal, purchasing abortion drugs online, or getting an abortion that could be risky.
The ruling, which was unfathomable only a few years ago, was the result of decades of work by abortion opponents and was made feasible by the court’s right flank, which has grown more assertive thanks to the addition of three Trump nominees.
Due to the historic decision, much of the US is now prepared for a violent weekend. If the leak from last month that suggested an abortion ban was in the works came to pass, pro-abortion demonstrators pledged to riot.
Hard-left progressives, many of whom are connected to Antifa, have already set a number of pro-life organizations on fire in the US and scrawled threats of additional retaliation on nearby buildings.
In preparation for escalating protests outside the U.S. Supreme Court, police in the nation’s capital are organizing and bringing in more personnel.
The U.S. Capitol Police claims that in order to get ready for demonstrations, other law enforcement agencies and it have been collaborating closely. According to a law enforcement official, the department will mobilize its civil disturbance team and hire more police on Friday.
Since the shocking release of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in May, which suggested the court was willing to let states decide whether abortion was legal, tensions over the future of abortion rights in the US have been on the rise.
With liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Stephen Breyer dissenting, the 6-3 conservative majority upheld the draft’s conclusions. John Roberts, the Chief Justice, agreed.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Alito in the bench. Trump appointed the final three justices. Thomas cast the first anti-Roe vote thirty years ago.
In Roe v. Wade, it was acknowledged that a woman’s ability to end her pregnancy is safeguarded by the right to privacy guaranteed by the US Constitution.
In his judgment on Friday, Alito also argued that the 1992 rulings in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld the right to an abortion, were incorrect when they were made and must be overturned.
“Roe was egregiously mistaken from the beginning. Its logic was quite weak, and the choice had negative repercussions. And instead of settling the abortion debate on a national level, Roe and Casey have stoked controversy and widened division,’ Alito continued. We contend that Roe and Casey need to be rejected.
The decision restores the ability of states to enact laws outlawing abortion by eliminating it as a constitutional right. As of right now, 26 states are thought to be either certain or likely to outlaw abortion.
Soon after the ruling was announced, protests erupted outside the Supreme Court on Friday.
Pro-abortion protesters howled with outrage as the long-anticipated opinion was published, with hundreds gathered outside the court in Washington DC ahead of the widely-anticipated decision.
The landmark decision left many people visibly disappointed, and they hugged one another after discovering that their rallies against plans to end federal access to abortion had been in vain.
Pro-life activists who had assembled outside the US Supreme Court in anticipation of the historic decision also cheered with joy.
As word of the 6-3 decision started to go through the packed throng, some anti-abortionists were overcome with emotion and could be seen sobbing outside the US Supreme Court.
Abortion rights have been under threat in recent months as Republican-led states move to tighten rules – with some seeking to ban all abortions after six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant.
These include Arizona, where the Republican Governor in March signed a bill banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy; and Idaho where the governor signed a six-week abortion ban that allows family members of the foetus to sue providers who perform abortions past that point, similar to a Texas law enacted last year.
As it stands in the US, abortion can take place until about 24 weeks into pregnancy – but the exact period varies between states. For example, Texas outlaws abortion after around six weeks but Florida has a 15-week abortion restriction.
The finding is “outrageous and heart-wrenching,” according to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and carries out the Republican Party’s “dark and extreme goal of snatching away women’s right to make their own reproductive health decisions.”
Californian Republican and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters that he supports the court’s ruling.
McCarthy told reporters, “A lot of lives are going to be saved.” However, the decision-making power also rests with the citizens of the United States.
The verdict, according to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is a “huge step backwards” since he has “always believed in a woman’s right to choose.”
Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, the court’s three liberal justices, wrote a combined dissent.
They said, “We dissent with sorrow—for this Court, but more so for the many millions of American women who today have lost a basic constitutional right.”
The restriction of women’s rights and their status as free and equal citizens, they said, is an inevitable outcome of today’s decision, regardless of the specifics of the ensuing laws.
As a result of Friday’s decision, “a woman has no rights whatsoever from the first moment of conception.” The liberal justices continued, “Even at the greatest personal and familial sacrifices, a state may compel women to carry a pregnancy to term.”
Because it contravened a Supreme Court ruling on abortion rights, lower courts had previously blocked Mississippi’s statute.
According to figures examined by The Associated Press, the decision is anticipated to have a disproportionately negative impact on minority women who already have limited access to healthcare.
If Roe is repealed, there are currently laws against abortion in place in thirteen states, mostly in the South and Midwest. After six weeks of pregnancy, when many women are unaware that they are pregnant, another half-dozen states have near-total bans or prohibitions.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that promotes abortion rights, the debate will be over dormant abortion laws that were passed before Roe was ruled in 1973 or fresh measures to significantly limit when abortions can be performed.
According to data provided by Guttmacher, more than 90% of abortions occur in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, and more than half are now performed without surgery using tablets.
The choice was made in light of public opinion polls showing that the majority of Americans reject repealing Roe and leaving the option to allow abortion totally up to the states.
About 1 in 10 Americans, according to surveys by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and others, want abortion to be prohibited in all circumstances.
Most people support abortion being allowed in all or most situations, according to polls, although many also support limitations, particularly later in pregnancy.
The Biden administration and other pro-choice advocates have cautioned that a ruling reversing Roe would also jeopardize rulings by the Supreme Court in favor of homosexual rights and, maybe, contraception.
A 50-year-old constitutional provision that protects women’s freedom and equal station is eliminated by the majority, according to the liberal justices’ combined dissent.
It violates a fundamental rule-of-law concept intended to support legal consistency. All of that compromises other rights, including those to marriage, same-sex intimacy, and contraception. Finally, it jeopardizes the credibility of the Court.
However, Alito said that his analysis exclusively deals with abortion. Nothing in this ruling should be taken to question precedents that don’t deal with abortion, the author stated.
Regardless of the motivations behind the leak of Alito’s draft ruling, the conservatives persisted in overturning Roe and Casey.
In his draft, Alito rejected the arguments in favor of upholding the two rulings, including the claim that American women have relied on the right to abortion for political and economic power for many decades.
The anti-abortion side’s strategy has been centered on changing the court’s makeup. As the case progressed, Mississippi and its allies made more adamant arguments, and two high court proponents of abortion rights retired or passed away. At first, the state claimed that its statute could stand without contradicting the court’s abortion rulings.
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, then-Gov. Phil Bryant signed the 15-week measure into law.
Kennedy retired in the early summer and was succeeded by Justice Brett Kavanaugh a few months later. Lower federal courts rejected the Mississippi statute.
But the state was always going to the highest court in the land. The statute was finally declared unconstitutional in December 2019 after it did not even request a hearing before a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Supreme Court was prepared to take the state’s appeal into consideration by early September 2020.
The court set a secret meeting of the justices for September 29 to discuss the case. In the interim, however, Ginsburg passed away, and without a single Democratic vote, Barrett was swiftly nominated and approved.
Although it took the court another six months to decide to hear the case, the scene was now set.
By the time Mississippi submitted its primary written argument to the court in the summer, the fundamental focus of its case had altered, and it now demanded that Roe and Casey be completely overruled.
The court’s decision to allow Texas to enact a restriction on the practice at about six weeks, before some women even realize they are pregnant, in late summer was the first indication that the court would be open to eliminating the constitutional right to abortion. The justices divided their decision 5-4.
That argument centered on the peculiar design of the law, especially the fact that private persons rather than government agents were responsible for enforcing it.
However, in a sharp dissent on behalf of the three liberal justices, Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out 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 opponents.
The court again rejected to do so by a 5-4 decision in December after hearing more arguments regarding whether to prohibit the Texas statute known as S.B. 8. Roberts stated in a partial dissent that “the clear purpose and actual impact of S. B. 8 has been to annul this Court’s judgements.”
Trump’s three high court nominees carefully avoided questions during their Senate confirmation hearings about how they would vote in any cases, including those involving abortion.
But even while Democrats and proponents of abortion rights believed Kavanaugh and Gorsuch would vote to restrict access to abortion if approved, at least one Republican senator had a different opinion of the two.
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 overturning the abortion cases.
Before she was appointed a federal judge in 2017, Barrett was arguably the most outspoken opponent of abortion during her stint as a law professor.
At Notre Dame University, where she taught law, she was a part of anti-abortion organizations.
She also signed a newspaper ad condemning “abortion on demand” and advocating “the right to life from fertilization to natural death.”
She committed to putting aside her personal opinions when rendering judgments.
Meanwhile, Trump had claimed that anyone he appointed to the court would ‘automatically’ vote to overturn Roe when he was a candidate.