OVERTURNED
U.S. SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN ROE V. WADE, ENDING 50 YEARS OF CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO ABORTION
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday reversed nearly a half-century of the federally protected right to abortion, dealing a blow to advocates for women’s and individual privacy rights and sparking elation among those who have fought for decades against the practice.
The decision to uphold a strict Mississippi state law overturns the nationwide standard established in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade case and leaves the legality of the procedure up to the states, several of which have already passed “trigger laws” that will restrict or essentially ban the practice almost immediately.
The ruling also nullifies one made nearly 20 years later in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The 1992 case, centered on a restrictive Pennsylvania law, reaffirmed a woman’s individual private right to terminate a pregnancy before a fetus could survive outside of the womb, generally at 24 weeks, but returned some power to the states.
The court’s 6-3 ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization upholds Mississippi’s 2018 Gestational Age Act, which outlaws most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for medical emergencies or severe abnormalities.
Thousands gathered near the fenced-off Supreme Court building following the release of the ruling.
The crowd split into anti- and pro-abortion factions, carrying dueling signs that read, “Protection at conception” and “Bans off our bodies.”
“This is an amazing day,” said JC Carpenter, who traveled from Yuba City, Calif. “This country is beginning to right a wrong that had been standing for 50 years.”
Ms. Carpenter, who said she
runs an anti-abortion sidewalk ministry in California, spoke against a backdrop of young demonstrators playing loud, upbeat music, blowing bubbles and holding signs that read, “I am the post-Roe generation.”
Chants from nearby proabortion activists rivaled the celebratory music.
Through megaphones they shouted: “Not the judge, not the state, women will decide our fate,” and, “Hands off.”
One demonstrator, Sarah Kuhns, 28, of Virginia, stood silently with blue tape over her mouth that read “2nd class citizen.” She held a sign asking, “What other rights will they take away?”
Meanwhile, statements from elected officials poured onto social media and into newsrooms.
President Joe Biden delivered live remarks, saying, “It’s a sad day for the court and the country,” and asking protesters to remain peaceful.
Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who has broken with his party in the past to support some abortion restrictions, posted a strongly worded statement saying the decision “upends almost a half century of legal precedent and rips away a constitutional right that generations of women have known their entire lives. This dangerous ruling won’t end abortions in this country, but it will put women’s lives at risk.”
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., praised the decision.
The ruling “restores the American people’s ability to determine abortion laws through their elected representatives, as the Constitution requires,” he wrote on Twitter.
“Precedents that are wrongly decided should be overturned, just as Brown v. Board of Education was right to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson,” Mr. Toomey said.
A draft opinion leaked last month to the news outlet Politico indicated the nation’s highest court, with a 63 conservative majority, would issue a ruling in favor of the Mississippi law and hand the question of abortion rights back to the states.
Justice Samuel Alito, in the final opinion issued Friday, wrote that Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey were wrong the day they were decided and had to be overturned.
“We therefore hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives,” Justice Alito wrote.
Authority to regulate abortion rests with the political branches, not the courts, Justice Alito wrote.
Joining him were Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The latter three justices were appointed by then-President Donald Trump. Justice Thomas first voted to overrule Roe 30 years ago.
Chief Justice John Roberts would have stopped short of ending the abortion right, noting that he would have upheld the Mississippi law at the heart of the case, a ban on abortion after 15 weeks, and said no more.
Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — the diminished liberal wing of the court — were in dissent.
The ruling undoes years of protection at the federal level that treated the individual choice under the Constitution as a matter of privacy, and it confirms a victory for those who have fought against it on moral or religious terms.
The court in 1973 applied a constitutional question of the right to privacy when deciding whether a Texas woman under the fictional name Jane Roe could terminate her pregnancy in a state that prohibited it, except in cases to save a woman’s life.
In deciding the case, the court organized a framework around an individual’s right to abortion vs. the state’s right to regulate it over the course of a pregnancy’s development. The state had to remain out of the decision during the first trimester of pregnancy but could impose regulations by the third trimester.
The court in the 1992 changed that to base a state’s abortion regulations on fetal viability and whether a regulation placed an “undue burden,” or substantial obstacle, on a person seeking the procedure.
“This is the case that created the undue burden framework, and that really kind of created somewhat of an on-off switch of viability,” said Greer Donley, who studies laws surrounding abortion and contraception at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.
While anti-abortion activists for decades have tried “innovative strategies to attempt to chip away at or diminish abortion rights,” Ms. Donley said, the votes on the nation’s highest court were not in their favor.
“The two pivotal moments that matter most were Justice [Anthony] Kennedy retiring, and the big one was Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg dying,” she said.
The contour of the court shifted when three appointees during the Trump administration cemented the court’s conservative majority.
“After the leaked draft opinion, we suspected what people who’ve been studying in this area have kind of suspected for a long time — that Roe was going to be fully overturned in this case,” she said.
Friday’s ruling comes at a time of heightened political tension surrounding the court. A California man was indicted this month after being arrested outside of Justice Kavanaugh’s Maryland home with a gun and knife. The incident prompted congressional action to boost securityfor the justices.
The abortion ruling also comes ahead of the November midterm elections, with Democrats attempting to hold a slim majority in Congress. Both parties are ramping up messaging around the issue.
While public opinion polls, including those from Gallup and Pew Research, show support for abortion at some of the highest levels in decades, a deep divide still exists between the two major political parties.
Democratic Party strategists say the decision plays into their larger frame heading into the midterms: that the GOP is “wildly out of step with the American people.”
Immediately after the leaked draft opinion, party organizers launched billboard campaigns and worked with local and state party members and interest groups around messaging and persuasion events.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokeswoman Helen Kalla said, “Extremist Republican candidates know their crusade to take away women’s freedom to make our own decisions about our bodies is toxic in battleground districts — and we’ll be reminding voters of what’s at stake every day until November.”
GOP strategists, meanwhile, are employing messaging ahead of the midterms that paint the Democratic Party as wanting “limitless” abortion.
“Democrats know that their radical, late-term abortion agenda is out of step,” said Republican National Committee spokeswoman Rachel Lee.
Reflecting the rhetoric, the nation is about to be a fragmented patchwork of reproductive policy. Just under half of U.S. states are poised to restrict or ban abortion in the absence of Roe, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an advocacy organization that tracks abortion laws.
Thirteen states have laws designed to “trigger” now that Roe has been overturned. Pennsylvania is not one of them; Ohio has a socalled heartbeat bill tied up in court that would prohibit abortion after the first detectable fetal heartbeat.
West Virginia is among several states that have preRoe laws or other conflicting regulations on the books that could mean certain restrictions or an immediate ban will go into effect.
In Pennsylvania
Abortion remains legal in Pennsylvania, as regulated by the Commonwealth’s Abortion Control Act. Thirteen free-standing clinics across Pennsylvania provide surgical abortion, according to the Women’s Law Project; two of them are in Allegheny County — the only two on the western side of the state.
Under Pennsylvania’s law, those seeking an abortion must be less than 24 weeks pregnant, receive state-mandated counseling and wait 24 hours before the procedure. In most situations for pregnant teens, a parent or guardian must provide consent.
The law was the subject of the 1992 Casey decision, and among the restrictions under question was a requirement for married women to obtain spousal permission before seeking an abortion.
Mr. Casey’s father, former Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey Sr., was a central figure in the case.
Mr. Casey voted last month in favor of a symbolic push to codify the federal right to abortion. The effort did not gain enough support to clear the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.
Anti-abortion advocates at the state level say they are now organizing around an effort to outlaw abortion via an amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution.