With the reversal of Roe v. Wade, US Supreme Court gives states free rein on abortion rights

The US Supreme Court has set aside legal precedent that has protected access to abortion for nearly five decades, giving individual states free rein to determine reproductive rights. The landmark decision won praise from some for protecting the unborn, but was attacked by others as an act of judicial misogyny that reimposes archaic customs on the world’s leading economic power.

Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that enshrined abortion rights in the United States, “was terribly wrong from the start,” Judge Samuel Alito wrote in a court opinion that based his argument on a strict reading of the US Constitution. and a survey of centuries of English common law dating back to the 1200s.

“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,” the court held in the decision, which had previously been leaked to the media in draft form.

As a result, previous decisions that guaranteed the right to abortion “must be annulled,” the court said.

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The court ruling, which upheld a Mississippi law that banned most abortions at 15 weeks, upended health care provision in much of the country. The researchers say 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion. The court’s decision drew condemnation from the White House, legal scholars and abortion providers. It’s a “national tragedy and global embarrassment,” said Bhavik Kumar, chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.

“It just stuns me,” President Joe Biden he said during a press conference. The court is “literally setting America back 150 years.”

In a sharp dissent, three liberal justices warned that the decision means “that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A State can force her to carry a pregnancy to term, even at the greatest personal and family costs.” The dissidence warned that the door is now open for the federal government to ban the procedure at the national level.

If that happens, “a woman’s challenge will be to finance a trip, not to ‘New York [or] California’ but Toronto,” the judges wrote.

The decision may also undermine the legal foundations that protect contraception and same-sex marriage. Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion, said those precedents should be reconsidered. majority of the court The opinion contradicted Justice Thomas’s assessment, saying it is an “unfounded fear that our decision will jeopardize those other rights,” and that abortion is unique.

But “no one should be sure that this majority is done with its job,” the three liberal justices wrote in disagreement.

The Biden administration is committed to doing everything in its power to protect women. “This fall, Roe is on the ballot. Personal freedoms are on the ballot,” Biden said.

However, no executive order can overturn the court’s decision, which Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement “will have a vastly disproportionate effect, with people of color and those with limited financial resources feeling the greatest burdens.”

Thirteen states have passed anti-abortion “trigger laws” that can be triggered by publication of the decision. In Texas, Planned Parenthood halted abortion services on Friday.

Elsewhere, abortion clinics continued to operate, pending final decisions from their respective states to enact trigger laws. “We haven’t been told it’s illegal in Utah. However,” Karrie Galloway, president of the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, said Friday morning. By night, Utah had certified its activation law.

Ms. Galloway lamented the “dark” prospect of being among the many American women who are now “unable to make decisions about their own bodies”.

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For others in Utah, the decision came as an answer to prayer.

“This is an exciting and happy day for the unborn babies of the United States of America,” said Gayle Ruzicka, president of the Utah Eagle Forum and a close friend of the late anti-abortion activist Phyllis Schlafly.

Considered the matriarch of conservative politics in Utah, Ms. Ruzicka has spent more than three decades fighting abortion in the state. “I wanted to see this happen before I died,” she said. With her decision, she added, the Supreme Court has “blessed our country.”

“It defines in many ways who we are.”

The decision “affirms the value that the United States places on human life,” said Karianne Lisonbee, the activation bill sponsor for the Utah House of Representatives. Republican lawmakers in Utah have already met to discuss what’s next. “We have determined that we want to try to pave the way to make adoptions easier for couples who want to adopt,” said Ms. Lisonbee.

The court’s dissenting opinion cited a study that found that among women denied abortions, only 9 percent gave their child up for adoption.

Legal scholar Caroline Frederickson, a visiting professor at Georgetown Law, criticized conservative justices for cloaking personal theological preference in legal language. “I don’t think there’s really any question. This is a theocratic court,” she said. The view that abortion necessarily ends a life, she said, is “a religious point of view. It is not a medical point of view.”

The court’s opinion points to a tradition of criminalizing abortion dating back to the 13th century, citing the writings of English jurist Henry of Bracton. De Bracton’s other observations include: “Women differ from men in many respects, as their position is inferior to that of men.”

The consequences of the abortion decision will be far-reaching. Companies will be forced to take a stand, in part when deciding on health benefits for women and how to allocate those benefits to employees in states that ban abortion, said Jennifer Reynolds, executive director of Women Corporate Directors, a membership organization. Recruitment in some states may be affected, she added.

“I wish I was watching a dystopian movie, not today’s news. But it’s actually reality,” she said.

The decision may further inflame the American public’s growing mistrust of its main judicial body. Only one in four Americans now express confidence in the Supreme Court, according to a recent Gallup poll, an all-time low.

“It’s an important time when people are asking fundamental questions,” said Olatunde Johnson, a Columbia Law School scholar who served on Mr. Biden’s Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court, along with Professor Frederickson.

What should be the limits of the power of the Supreme Court? Should there be term limits? What responsibility does Congress have? Is it time to reform the Constitution?

Whether any of those problems can be solved in a country divided by political divisions, “I don’t know,” Professor Johnson said. “But these weren’t conversations that I listened to really seriously a decade ago.”

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