USA – The Supreme Court’s ‘Dead Hand’

The 6–3 majority-conservative Supreme Court is dangerously out of step with a demographically and culturally changing America.

By Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic
FEBRUARY 11, 2022

The supreme court has set itself on a collision course with the forces of change in an inexorably diversifying America.

The six Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices have been nominated and confirmed by GOP presidents and senators representing the voters least exposed, and often most hostile, to the demographic and cultural changes remaking 21st-century American life. Now the GOP Court majority is moving at an accelerating pace to impose that coalition’s preferences on issues such as abortion, voting rights, and affirmative action.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/02/supreme-court-conservative-rulings/622050/

USA – The Supreme Court is leading a Christian conservative revolution

Almost as soon as Justice Barrett was confirmed, the Court handed down a revolutionary “religious liberty” decision. It hasn’t slowed down since.

By Ian Millhiser
Jan 30, 2022

Justice Amy Coney Barrett had been a member of the Supreme Court for less than a month when she cast the key vote in one of the most consequential religion cases of the past century.

Months earlier, when the seat she would fill was still held by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court had handed down a series of 5-4 decisions establishing that churches and other houses of worship must comply with state occupancy limits and other rules imposed upon them to slow the spread of Covid-19.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/22889417/supreme-court-religious-liberty-christian-right-revolution-amy-coney-barrett

Overturning Roe isn’t only about red states or abortion

BY MICHAEL J. DELL, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
01/29/22

As the Supreme Court
considers Mississippi’s request to overturn Roe v. Wade, most people realize
that the constitutional right to abortion is in grave, perhaps mortal peril.
Former President Donald Trump made clear he would pack the court with justices
who would reject Roe, and he was able to pick three justices: Neil Gorsuch,
Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

It is hard to
overstate what a critical crossroad the challenge to Roe presents not only for
abortion but for so many of our other most cherished constitutional rights.

Continued: https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/591954-overturning-roe-isnt-only-about-red-states-or-abortion

29.01.2022

Featured

Opinion

14th Amendment

Chief Justice John Roberts

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

On Abortion Law, the U.S. Is Unusual. Without Roe, It Would Be, Too.

Claire Cain Miller and Margot Sanger-Katz
Sat, January 22, 2022

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said last month that the United States was an international outlier in allowing abortion more than halfway through pregnancy. That later cutoff, he said, places the U.S. in the company of North Korea and China.

It’s true in some ways, but not all. Few countries allow abortion without restriction until fetal viability, the cutoff set by Roe v. Wade, which was decided 49 years ago today. Because of medical advances, that is now around 23 weeks. And only around a dozen other countries allow abortions for any reason beyond 15 weeks of pregnancy, the threshold in the Mississippi law the Supreme Court is considering, which could overturn Roe.

But in many countries, women can get an abortion after the gestational cutoff — for a wide variety of reasons, like health or economic ones. In some, it can be easier to obtain an abortion than in many parts of the U.S. Also, peer countries tend to have more abortion providers, and cover the costs of abortions.

Continued: https://news.yahoo.com/abortion-law-u-unusual-without-165053636.html

Who Gets Abortions in America?

New York Times
By Margot Sanger-Katz, Claire Cain Miller and Quoctrung Bui
Dec. 14, 2021

The portrait of abortion in the United States has changed with society. Today, teenagers are having far fewer abortions, and abortion patients are most likely to already be mothers. Although there’s a lot of debate over gestational cutoffs, nearly half of abortions happen in the first six weeks of pregnancy, and nearly all in the first trimester.

The typical patient, in addition to having children, is poor; is unmarried and in her late 20s; has some college education; and is very early in pregnancy. But in the reproductive lives of women (and transgender and nonbinary people who can become pregnant) across America, abortion is not uncommon. The latest estimate, from the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research group that supports abortion rights, found that 25 percent of women will have an abortion by the end of their childbearing years.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/14/upshot/who-gets-abortions-in-america.html

14.12.2021

Commentary

Featured

Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health

Caitlin Knowles Myers

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Chief Justice John Roberts

Guttmacher Institute

Rachel Jones

Ushma Upadhyay

who has abortions in America

Supreme Court thwarts bid to block SB8 on ‘dark day’ for Texas abortion rights

The justices ruled more than 3 months after allowing SB8 to go ahead.

By Devin Dwyer
10 December 2021

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday said a narrowly tailored challenge to Texas' near-total ban on abortions, SB8, could proceed in federal courts but declined for a second time to put the law on hold.

The decision, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, all but foreclosed hope for a sweeping federal court order halting SB8 enforcement in Texas, abortion rights advocates said.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supreme-court-acts-texas-abortion-law-sb8/story?id=80973461

Chief Justice John Roberts warns Supreme Court over Texas abortion law

Roberts joined the high court’s three liberal justices in discussing the constitutionality of the Texas abortion law.

Dec. 10, 2021
By Rebecca Shabad

WASHINGTON — The chief justice of the United States, John Roberts, warned Friday that the Supreme Court risks losing its own authority if it allows states to circumvent the courts as Texas did with its near-total abortion ban.

In a strongly worded opinion joined by the high court’s three liberal justices, Roberts wrote that the "clear purpose and actual effect" of the Texas law was "to nullify this Court’s rulings." That, he said, undermines the Constitution and the fundamental role of the Supreme Court and the court system as a whole.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/chief-justice-john-roberts-warns-supreme-court-over-texas-abortion-n1285747

Abortion rights advocates call for California to become a true ‘Reproductive Freedom State’ if Roe v. Wade is overturned

By Steve Almasy, CNN
Thu December 9, 2021

(CNN) A coalition of more than 40 organizations, including abortion rights advocacy groups, issued a report on Wednesday with 45 recommendations to "protect, strengthen and expand abortion services" in California.

The report comes as the US Supreme Court weighs new laws in Texas and Mississippi that are much more restrictive than 1973's Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationwide and says states can't ban abortion unless a fetus is viable or can survive outside the womb.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/09/us/california-abortion-report-reproductive-freedom-state/index.html

Conservatives Are Tearing Down Roe. That’s Extreme — and Just the Beginning

What makes you think a movement this extreme would stop at erasing a woman’s right to choose?

By ALEX MORRIS , Rolling Stone
December 4, 2021

Listening to the oral arguments this week in
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, one thing seemed abundantly
clear: Roe v. Wade will soon be overturned. This was clear in Chief Justice
John Roberts’ line of questioning, as he lamely tried to get his conservative
colleagues to stick to the Mississippi law’s original (unconstitutional)
15-week ban rather than considering a full overturn of Roe that the state
started pushing for as soon as Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed. It was
clear when Barrett inanely skirted the issue of forced pregnancy and childbirth
by reassuring the court that “safe haven” laws still allowed women to give
their babies up for adoption. It was especially clear when Justice Brett
Kavanaugh began suggesting that the Constitution is “neutral on the question of
abortion” and enumerating cases in which precedent has been overturned. Based
on their line of questioning — and to the extent that it is predictive — a
majority of justices demonstrated not only a willingness to overturn Roe but
some prior consideration of how to justify doing so. Whether Dobbs is the case
that will finally mark the end of the constitutionally protected right to an
abortion (and we probably won’t know until June or July), it is clear that the
end is coming soon.

Continued: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/roevwade-dobbsvjackson-abortion-lgbtq-rights-1266062/

The Supreme Court Gaslights Its Way to the End of Roe

Dec. 3, 2021
By Linda Greenhouse, Contributing Opinion Writer

There are many reasons for dismay over the Supreme Court argument in the Mississippi abortion case, but it was the nonstop gaslighting that really got to me.

First there was Justice Clarence Thomas, pretending by his questions actually to be interested in how the Constitution might be interpreted to provide for the right to abortion, a right he has denounced and schemed to overturn since professing to the Senate Judiciary Committee 30 years ago that he never even thought about the matter.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/opinion/abortion-supreme-court.html