Sarah Weddington, attorney who won Roe v Wade abortion case, dies aged 76

Texan lawyer and Linda Coffee won landmark 1973 case, safeguarding right now under threat from US supreme court

Martin Pengelly in New York
Sun 26 Dec 2021

Sarah Weddington, an attorney who argued and won the Roe v Wade supreme court case which established the right to abortion in the US, has died aged 76.

Susan Hays, a Democratic candidate for Texas agriculture commissioner, announced the news on Twitter on Sunday and the Dallas Morning News confirmed it.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/26/sarah-weddington-attorney-who-won-roe-v-wade-abortion-case-dies-aged-76


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


The Supreme Court’s Texas Abortion Ruling Isn’t the Victory Many Want It to Be

Sonia Sotomayor said it best: “The Court should have put an end to this madness months ago.… It failed to do so [earlier], and it fails again today.”

By Elie Mystal
December 10, 2021

The Supreme Court today allowed some lawsuits to go forward against Texas’s six-week abortion ban, commonly known as Senate Bill 8. The majority opinion, written by Neil Gorsuch, allows abortion providers to sue a limited number of state officials and argue that the ban is unconstitutional. The decision means that lower courts will now be allowed to rule on the merits of the ban, and those lower court decisions will eventually be appealed back to the Supreme Court. The law will remain in place while that litigation plays out.

Meanwhile, in a separate, unsigned opinion, the Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice against SB 8.

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


It’s time to say it: The conservatives on the Supreme Court lied to us all

By Paul Waldman, Columnist
Dec 3, 2021

They lied.

Yes, I’m talking about the conservative justices on the Supreme Court, and the abortion rights those justices have now made clear they will eviscerate.

They weren’t just evasive, or vague, or deceptive. They lied. They lied to Congress and to the country, claiming they either had no opinions at all about abortion, or that their beliefs were simply irrelevant to how they would rule. They would be wise and pure, unsullied by crass policy preferences, offering impeccably objective readings of the Constitution.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/03/supreme-court-conservatives-lied/


Gutting Roe means 2022 will be about abortion rights

With the conservative-majority Supreme Court expected to roll back abortion rights next year, the danger in handing even more power to Republicans should be front and center in the midterms.

BY ERIC LUTZ, Vanity Fair
DECEMBER 2, 2021

Surprised that the Supreme Court, stacked 6-3 in favor of the conservatives, appears likely to gut or kill Roe v. Wade? Don’t be. This is what the right has been working toward for decades. It’s what Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail in the 2016 election and Hillary Clinton warned about. And it’s why Republicans rejoiced at the installation of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. None of this is sudden. None of this is accidental. It is the product of a systematic conservative campaign to make over the judicial system. It is the product of Republicans, openly hostile to abortion rights, being elected to positions of power.

Continued: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/12/gutting-roe-means-2022-will-be-all-about-abortion-rights


With Roe in question, justices dig into private debate

By MARK SHERMAN and JESSICA GRESKO, Associated Press
Dec 2, 2021

WASHINGTON (AP) — Historic Supreme Court arguments over abortion behind them, the justices soon will begin the work of crafting a decision that could dramatically limit abortion rights in the United States.

They will meet in private before the week ends and take an initial vote on whether to uphold Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. But it will be months before a decision is issued.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-us-supreme-court-health-united-states-mississippi-65751e1b9ca7d34f1458ffe9729f82b2

With hundreds of demonstrators outsid


Today’s Supreme Court Case Makes It Clear: Amy Coney Barrett Will Decide the Future of Abortion Rights in the United States

That, to put it mildly, is not good news for the future of abortion rights

DECEMBER 1, 2021
By DAVID S. COHEN

The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard a Mississippi case that could overturn Roe v. Wade. After almost two hours of oral argument, it’s clear that the fate of nationwide legal abortion is now in the hands of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. That’s not good news for the future of abortion rights.

The case argued today involved a ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy. Roe and subsequent Supreme Court cases had been entirely clear that states could not ban abortion before “viability,” a medical term indicating when a fetus has developed enough that it could survive outside a woman on its own (though with extraordinary medical intervention). For most pregnancies, that’s about 23 or 24 weeks.

Continued: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/abortion-supreme-court-amy-coney-barrett-mississippi-1265450/


It didn’t go well for Texas at the Supreme Court

Opinion by Mary Ziegler
Tue November 2, 2021

(CNN) On Monday, the contentious Texas abortion law seemed to be in trouble at the US Supreme Court. But even if the court sides against Texas in one major abortion case, Roe v. Wade will still be at risk of being overturned in another.

The state was defending its novel abortion ban, SB8, in two lawsuits, one brought by abortion providers and the other by the Department of Justice. SB8 bans abortion as early as six weeks (or roughly two weeks before anyone could plausibly be expected to know that they were pregnant) but outsources enforcement entirely to private citizens, who can sue anyone who performs or aids in procuring an abortion for at least $10,000.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/01/opinions/texas-abortion-law-short-lived-ziegler/index.html


An unusual alliance appears likely to fracture Texas’s abortion ban

Most Supreme Court justices seem to understand that SB 8 is a direct attack on the Constitution.

By Ian Millhiser 
Nov 1, 2021

The abortion providers suing to block SB 8, Texas’s aggressive anti-abortion law, came into Monday’s Supreme Court argument with four votes on their side. Two months earlier, four justices thought the law should have been temporarily blocked while the legal challenge against it was sorted out — although the five most conservative justices voted against the abortion providers the first time Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson was before the Court.

The same case is now back before the justices, this time raising a narrow dispute about who’s even allowed to sue to block the law. And the abortion providers appear likely to have picked up a crucial extra vote to gain the majority.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/2021/11/1/22757180/supreme-court-abortion-sb8-texas-whole-womans-health-jackson-united-states


USA – These Aren’t Justices. They’re Used Car Salesmen, and They’re Coming for Your Abortion Rights.

The Supreme Court’s new conservative majority doesn’t just want to take your rights away—they want you to thank them for doing it.

Erin Gloria Ryan
Updated Oct. 26, 2021

One of the oldest sales tricks in the book is the one where the salesperson presents the potential buyer with an extremely crappy option first, and follows that up with an only moderately crappy second option. The potential buyer, dazzled by the jump in quality between options one and two, won’t scrutinize option two as much, because it’s so much better than option one. This has been employed by slimy realtors, wedding planners, and used car salesmen.

And now, we’ve reached the point in the American experiment where the Supreme Court’s new conservative majority has resorted to a cheap sales tactic in an attempt to rehabilitate its image. Lower the customer’s expectations enough, conventional wisdom goes, and they’ll thank you for ripping them off.

Continued: https://www.thedailybeast.com/these-arent-justices-theyre-used-car-salesmen-and-theyre-coming-for-your-abortion-rights