The inside story of how John Roberts failed to save abortion rights

Joan Biskupic, CNN legal analyst & Supreme Court biographer
Tue July 26, 2022

Chief Justice John Roberts privately lobbied fellow conservatives to save the constitutional right to abortion down to the bitter end, but May's unprecedented leak of a draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade made the effort all but impossible.

It appears unlikely that Roberts' best prospect -- Justice Brett Kavanaugh -- was ever close to switching his earlier vote, despite Roberts' attempts that continued through the final weeks of the session.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/26/politics/supreme-court-john-roberts-abortion-dobbs/index.html

A 49-year crusade: Inside the movement to overturn Roe v. Wade

Antiabortion activists and their Republican allies are on the cusp of reaching a goal they have sought for decades in tossing out the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion.

By Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey, Caroline Kitchener and Rachel Roubein, Washington Post
May 7, 2022

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell still remembers the shock he felt when Donald Trump won the 2016 election. He also recalls what happened next.

“The first thing that came to my mind was the Supreme Court,” McConnell said in an interview this past week, remembering his reaction that night as he watched results from a basement office at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He soon called Donald McGahn, campaign counsel to the president-elect, who was slated to become the top White House lawyer.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/07/abortion-movement-roe-wade/

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

The 19th Explains: Texas’ six-week abortion ban is still stuck in court. Here’s why.

Despite a December ruling allowing legal challenges to proceed, the abortion law remains in effect. Where do things currently stand? And where will they go next?

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
January 4, 2022

Abortion providers challenging Texas’ six-week abortion ban have asked that the Supreme Court send their case to a district judge, a critical follow-up to a December ruling that could effectively end any challenges to the law.

Because of the law’s unique structure — rather than criminalizing abortion, it allows private citizens to sue anyone who helps someone end a pregnancy at six weeks or later — the state of Texas argued before the Supreme Court that the abortion ban did not fall within the purview of federal courts and could not be legally challenged.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2022/01/texas-six-week-abortion-ban-legal-challenge-court/

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/

10.12.2021

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/

03.12.2021

Amy Coney Barrett

Brett Kavanaugh

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

Clarence Thomas

confirmation hearings

Laura Ingraham

Neil Gorsuch

overturning precedent

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