Another Risk in Overturning Roe

The decision rejects the idea of fetal personhood—which anti-abortion groups have been pushing on state legislatures.

By Jia Tolentino, New Yorker
February 20, 2022

January 22nd marked the forty-ninth anniversary of Roe v. Wade—and, likely, the last year that its protections will remain standing. In December, during oral arguments, the Supreme Court’s six conservative Justices signalled their intention to uphold a Mississippi law that, in banning almost all abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy, defies Roe’s protections. Most of those Justices seemed prepared to overturn Roe entirely. Without Roe, which prohibits states from banning abortion before fetal viability—at twenty-eight weeks when the law was decided, and closer to twenty-two weeks now—abortion could become mostly inaccessible and illegal in at least twenty states.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/02/28/another-risk-in-overturning-roe-v-wade-abortion

What Would a Post-Roe America Look Like?

Dec. 10, 2021
By Spencer Bokat-Lindell

In 1973, Americans gained a constitutional right to abortion. In 2022, they may lose it.

Those are the stakes of a case that the Supreme Court heard last week, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, involving a Mississippi law that bans nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/10/opinion/supreme-court-abortion-roe.html

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

From Abortion Bans to Anti-Trans Laws, a Christian Legal Army is Waging War on America

Democracy Now!
Dec 3, 2021
Video: 19 mins – with transcript

As the Supreme Court looks poised to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban and possibly overturn Roe v. Wade we speak to The Nation’s Amy Littlefield about her investigation into the Christian legal army behind the Mississippi law as well as anti-trans laws across the country. She also critiques the mainstream pro-choice movement’s failure to center the poor and people of color. “There is a change coming within the movement because of its reckoning with these past missteps including, frankly, the failure to adequately protect Black women and to stand up for the safety of the people whose rights were eroded first,” says Littlefield.

Continued: https://www.democracynow.org/2021/12/3/thinking_beyond_roe_amy_littlefield_abortion

Will Supreme Court conservatives overturn Roe? Their casual contempt for women is not a good sign

The GOP justices compared women's rights to white supremacy and spoke of adoption like it's donating used clothes

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
DECEMBER 1, 2021

Despite all the legalese about "stare decisis" and "reliance interests," the abortion rights hearing held at the Supreme Court Wednesday morning came down to one question: Can women's rights simply be disappeared, with the ease of shaking an Etch-A-Sketch?

Unfortunately, 6 out of 9 members of the Court seemed to strongly believe that yes, it's time to hit the reset button on that whole "treating women like full human beings" experiment after nearly 50 years, since Roe vs. Wade, of women having full human rights. Through the two hours of questioning in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health, one word came to mind to describe the stance of the conservative judges: Contempt.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2021/12/01/will-conservatives-overturn-roe-their-casual-contempt-for-women-is-not-a-good-sign/

For Clarence Thomas, avowed critic of Roe v. Wade, Mississippi abortion case a moment long awaited

By Robert Barnes
Nov 27, 2021

Judge Clarence Thomas said at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991 that he hadn’t given that much thought to whether Roe v. Wade was correctly decided.

But Justice Clarence Thomas took only months to reach a conclusion: The landmark 1973 ruling guaranteeing a woman’s right to abortion should be discarded.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/clarence-thomas-abortion/2021/11/27/31f3c960-4c76-11ec-b0b0-766bbbe79347_story.html

USA – To Protect Abortion Rights, Turn to Elections

Nov. 27, 2021

By The Editorial Board, New York Times

Will the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade? As the justices prepare to hear oral arguments on Dec. 1 in the biggest abortion case in decades, that is the understandable question on everyone’s mind. It’s also a misleading one.

Yes, Roe could possibly meet its demise when the court decides Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which involves a Mississippi law that bans nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. After all, outlawing abortion in America has been an animating object of the conservative movement for nearly half a century. But the Supreme Court never had a reliably anti-choice majority to pull it off. Now, largely thanks to the engineering of Senator Mitch McConnell, the court is stacked with a supermajority of conservative justices, several of whom surely must be tempted to finish the job they were put on the court to do.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/27/opinion/roe-abortion-dobbs-scotus.html

27.11.2021

Editorial

Featured

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Mitch McConnell

overturning Roe v. Wade

Planned Parenthood v. Casey

Roe v. Wade

U.S. Supreme Court

undue burden standard

Texas abortion ban is an early glimpse of what post-Roe America would look like for women

By Katherine Dautrich, Isabelle Chapman, Majlie de Puy Kamp and Casey Tolan, CNN
Fri October 22, 2021 (CNN)

Nicole began her morning with a simple prayer: "Please let my car start today."

She had already gotten the mandatory ultrasound, scrounged up $595 and taken time off work. But at that moment -- with her pregnancy at exactly six weeks -- getting an abortion in her home state boiled down to her hatchback's temperamental engine turning over.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/22/us/texas-abortion-ban-invs/index.html

Supreme Court to hear restrictive Mississippi abortion law on December 1

By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter
Mon September 20, 2021

Washington (CNN)The Supreme Court will hear a case concerning a Mississippi abortion law on December 1, the court announced on Monday, teeing up one of the most substantial cases of the term in which the justices are being asked to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The Mississippi case -- the most important set of abortion-related oral arguments the court has heard since 1992 -- comes as states across the country, emboldened by the conservative majority and the addition of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the high court, are increasingly passing restrictive abortion-related regulations, hoping to curb the constitutional right first established in 1973 in Roe and reaffirmed in 1992 when the court handed down Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/20/politics/supreme-court-mississippi-abortion-law/index.html

Roe v. Wade hasn’t been overturned. The rule of law might have been.

The Supreme Court just declined to uphold the Constitution.

By Erwin Chemerinsky
Sep 2, 2021

The Supreme Court’s decision, in the wee hours of Thursday morning, declining to enjoin a Texas law that bans abortions after about the sixth week of pregnancy, immediately prompted the reaction that “Roe v. Wade is dead” and “Roe v. Wade got overturned.” But Roe v. Wade wasn’t expressly overturned. The landmark 1973 ruling was, as former secretary of state Hillary Clinton tweeted, “gutted.” The insult to the injury of the court’s decision is that a 5-to-4 majority didn’t countermand the court’s own holding in Roe. Instead, in a cowardly unsigned opinion, members of the majority — over the signed dissents of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal justices — declined to carry out their central and sacred functions: to protect constitutional rights and uphold the rule of law.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/02/roe-overturn-texas-constitution/