The Supreme Court is unscientific and medically negligent

Robert Pearl
July 25, 2022

A pair of Supreme Court rulings in June — one on gun rights, the other on abortion — have elicited strong, partisan reactions.

In recent weeks, critics have called out inconsistencies in the court’s decisions: One ruling restricts the ability of states to regulate guns while the other expands the right of states to regulate abortions. The result, opponents say, is that Americans are free to carry guns but forced to carry babies.

Continued: https://thefulcrum.us/Government/Judicial/supreme-court-decisions

25.07.2022

Justice Stephen Breyer

There’s a Glaring Weakness in Justice Alito’s Case Against Roe v. Wade

BY KATE SHAW AND STEVEN MAZIE
MAY 27, 2022

It has been more than three weeks since the bombshell leak of a draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—the pending Supreme Court case that could end abortion rights in America as we know them. Justice Samuel Alito’s draft pronounces Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision recognizing a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, “egregiously wrong from the start.”

Laced with contempt for a right that has stood for 49 years, the Dobbs draft overrules Roe along with the 1992 follow-on decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The weaknesses of the draft are many: a shockingly narrow view of constitutional rights; an insistence that killing “an unborn human being” poses a “critical moral question” with no acknowledgement that commandeering wombs might raise an ethical quandary, too; reasoning that, despite dubious disclaimers, puts other rights—including contraception, sexual intimacy, and marriage equality—at risk.

Continued: https://time.com/6182093/roe-v-wade-alito-abortion-reliance-interests/

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

If Roe falls, some fear ripple effect on civil rights cases

If the Supreme Court decides to overturn or gut the decision that legalized abortion, some fear that it could undermine other precedent-setting cases, including civil rights and LGBTQ protections

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press
7 December 2021

If the Supreme Court decides to overturn or gut the decision that legalized abortion, some fear that it could undermine other precedent-setting cases, including civil rights and LGBTQ protections.

Overturning Roe v. Wade would have a bigger effect than most cases because it was reaffirmed by a second decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, three decades later, legal scholars and advocates said. The Supreme Court's conservative majority signaled in arguments last week they would allow states to ban abortion much earlier in pregnancy and may even overturn the nationwide right that has existed for nearly 50 years. A decision is expected next summer.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/roe-falls-fear-ripple-effect-civil-rights-cases-81604652

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/

How the Supreme Court could overrule Roe v. Wade without overruling Roe v. Wade

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is an existential threat to Roe — even if the Court doesn’t use the words “Roe v. Wade is overruled.”

By Ian Millhiser
Nov 29, 2021

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which the Supreme Court will hear on Wednesday, is the single greatest threat to abortion rights since Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973. It involves a Mississippi law that prohibits nearly all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy, a law which violates the Supreme Court’s holding in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) that “a State may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy before viability.”

“Viability” refers to the moment when a fetus can live outside of the womb, which typically occurs around the 24th week of pregnancy. (It’s worth noting that, while Mississippi’s law is often described as a “15-week” ban, the law provides that the 15-week clock starts ticking on “the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman.” So, in practice, the law functions more like a 13-week abortion ban.)

Continued: https://www.vox.com/2021/11/29/22796446/supreme-court-roe-wade-abortion-dobbs-jackson-womens-health-organization-overrule

Chief Justice John Roberts is at the epicenter of an abortion dispute before the Supreme Court

By Joan Biskupic, CNN legal analyst & Supreme Court biographer
Sun November 28, 2021

(CNN)Since his first job as a young lawyer in Washington, John Roberts' work has been entangled with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that gave women a right to end a pregnancy.

He helped hoist the banner against Roe in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. But years later, during 2005 Senate hearings for the chief justice post he now holds, Roberts testified that Roe should be respected as precedent, particularly after being affirmed in 1992. And he has largely held to that.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/28/politics/abortion-roe-vs-wade-john-roberts-supreme-court/index.html

Roe vs. Wade in crosshairs at Supreme Court, which sticks with precedent, except when it doesn’t

Abortion rights hinge on justices’ regard for precedent as they weigh Mississippi’s 15-week ban in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health.

By Todd J. Gillman
Nov 24, 2021

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has overturned hundreds of its own rulings since 1789, but hardly any on an issue as divisive as abortion rights.

Next Wednesday, the justices will hear arguments on a 15-week ban adopted by Mississippi in open defiance of Roe vs. Wade, which gives women another two months to legally terminate a pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2021/11/24/abortion-foes-want-roe-overturned-and-supreme-court-hardly-ever-repudiates-its-own-landmark-rulings/

24.11.2021

Brown vs. Board of Education

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Obergefell v. Hodges

overturning precedent

Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey

Roe v. Wade Is Now in the Hands of the Three Trump Justices

Does that mean it might be safe?

BY DAVID S. COHEN AND DAHLIA LITHWICK
JULY 28, 2021

One of the most interesting fissures that has opened up within the conservative legal movement in recent years has been between mainstream conservative lawyers and the growing performance artist faction of the lawyers for the Trump base. Soon, the conservative justices themselves will have to pick which side of the battle they are on: With the filing last week of a brief that explicitly asks the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the state of Mississippi is forcing the court’s three newest Trump-appointed justices to choose between institutional stability and law that channels right-wing internet memes.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/07/mississippi-roe-challenge-barrett-kavanaugh-gorsuch.html

Clarence Thomas awaits his chance to drive the conservative majority on abortion and guns

By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter
Thu May 20, 2021

(CNN)Twenty-nine years ago, less than a year after he had taken the bench, Justice Clarence Thomas joined a dissent calling the landmark opinion Roe v. Wade "plainly wrong" and an "erroneous constitutional decision." Over the years Thomas would say Roe had "no basis in the Constitution" and call out the court's abortion precedents as "grievously wrong."

He also took aim at challenges to the Second Amendment, accusing lower courts and his own colleagues of thumbing their noses at the right to bear arms, calling it a "disfavored right."

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/20/politics/clarence-thomas-abortion-guns/index.html