After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the seminal 1973 ruling that legalized abortion statewide, President Joe Biden remarked on Friday that “it’s a sad day for the court and the country.”
He declared from the White House that after Roe, “let’s be absolutely clear, the health and lives of women across this nation are now in danger.”
The court, he continued, “has done what it has never done before — expressly removing a constitutional privilege that is so vital to so many Americans.”
He declared that the struggle for abortion rights “is not over.” According to Biden, his administration will defend access to contraceptives and will take all necessary steps to thwart attempts to prevent women from traveling to other states for abortions.
The 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 operation.
The 1973 Roe v. Wade judgment was overturned by the court’s conservative majority, ending the almost 50-year-old constitutional protections for abortion.
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 Mississippi statute, which prohibits abortions beyond 15 weeks with just a few limited medical exceptions, was upheld by the court in a 6-3 decision at the same time.
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.
Thirteen states have passed so-called “trigger laws” that effectively outlaw abortion: Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota,
Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. Ten other states have bills that would either outlaw abortion after six weeks, when many women don’t even realize they are pregnant, or pre-1973 laws that might become effective.
Due to the ruling, women in huge swaths of America will now have to decide between going to a different state where the procedure is still permitted and legal, purchasing abortion pills online, or getting a potentially risky illegal abortion.
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.
Donald Trump, a former president, applauded the Supreme Court of the United States for overturning a woman’s right to an abortion. In an appearance with Fox News, he claimed that everyone would benefit from the choice.
According to the channel, Trump stated, “This is obeying the Constitution and giving rights back when they should have been given long ago.” “I believe that everything will work out for everyone in the end.”
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 authority of states to enact laws outlawing abortion by eliminating it as a constitutional right. As of right moment, 26 states are thought to be either definitely or likely to outlaw abortion.
On Friday, protests broke out in front of the Supreme Court shortly after the decision was made.
With hundreds gathered outside the court in Washington, DC, in anticipation of the much anticipated verdict, pro-abortion protesters howled in indignation as the long-awaited opinion was released.
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.
As Republican-led states tighten regulations, including some that want to outlaw all abortions beyond six weeks, when many women aren’t even aware they are pregnant, abortion rights have been under assault recently.
These include Idaho, where the governor signed a six-week abortion ban that permits the family of the fetus to sue providers who perform abortions past that point, similar to a Texas law passed last year, and Arizona, where the Republican governor in March signed a bill outlawing abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Currently, abortion is legal in the US up to around 24 weeks of pregnancy, however the precise time frame varies by state. For instance, Florida forbids abortions after 15 weeks, whereas Texas outlaws them after around six weeks.
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.
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.
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 compiled 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 pills.
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 fre
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