Oral arguments in Idaho case make clear that further, even more radical attacks on reproductive freedom are coming.

JEET HEER
April 26, 2024

The five right-wing Supreme Court justices who overturned the constitutional right to abortion in the 2022 decision Dobbs v. Jackson built their argument on lies, one of which was a promise (pinkie swear!) that, despite the apparent radicalism of extinguishing Roe v. Wade, the court would henceforth respect precedent, leave abortion to the political arena, and not touch other decisions recognizing social and sexual rights. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito told a story that went something like this: Roe was such a bad decision that it was an outlier, a rare precedent that—like the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that enshrined racial segregation—was so egregious the court had to cast it aside. Roe was bad because it took abortion, properly a decision best left to the democratic contestation in the state and federal legislatures, and imposed a national consensus that had no popular legitimacy. According to Scalia, “The Court short-circuited the democratic process by closing to it the large number of Americans who dissented in any respect from Roe.”

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/supreme-court-abortion-idaho/