YOUR SAY ON ABORTION
Court indicated it is now a political force We asked: What does overturning the Roe v. Wade decision mean to you? What will it mean for the future of abortion in the United States?
Absent from the landmark decision, which took away every woman’s right to elect to have an abortion (which has existed for 49 years and was affirmed by courts across the nation countless times), were two of the Supreme Court’s newest judges’ echoed promises to abide by the doctrine of stare decisis, as well as any respect for the necessary nuance inherent in Roe’s decision in this hotly debated moral and legal issue.
Roe, despite all of its flaws, was a brilliant decision. Confronted with the gravity of having to decide whether the precious life of an unborn child begins at conception or at birth, the Roe court chose compromise, rendering an opinion that set viability (when the child can survive outside of the mother’s womb) as the dividing line between potential life that may be aborted and actual life that must be protected.
The June 24 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision is dangerous in its arrogant and hypocritical circumvention of the same doctrine of stare decisis lauded by each justice of the court during their confirmation hearings, but also an affront to all women in the U.S. who live in 15 to 20 states where abortion will soon be illegal.
Despite the court’s newest justices’ promises that they would not be “activist” judges, Dobbs is the clearest evidence that the current United States Supreme Court is a highly activist, conservative court.
Sadly, as with the recent concealed gun ruling of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, this court is rendering conservative decisions likely to further divide America. The abortion issue was explicitly left to the states, leaving women in blue states with greater reproductive rights than women in states that choose to ban abortions.
Yet with the Bruen case, the state of New York’s efforts to limit law-abiding citizens from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear concealed arms in public for self-defense was overturned. As a practical matter, it would seem this court should have punted the concealed weapon issue to the states as well. Instead, the court fortified the rarely visited Second Amendment, forcing all states to deal with more citizens carrying concealed firearms in public.
Regardless of where you stand on the abortion or gun issues, everyone should take the time to read the brilliant Dobbs dissent authored by justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. It dismantles the Dobbs opinion while exposing the hypocrisy of the justices who extinguished a right that was deemed constitutionally protected. Until June 24.
The Dobbs decision should be required reading for every high school student in America. For its failures.
But this activist court, particularly in Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion, has also signaled a determination to try and extinguish other previously enjoyed rights — such as the fundamental right of a same-sex couple to marry.
The tragedy of the decision is that parents will now know that which state they choose to live in will determine if their daughter can abort the child of her rapist or even terminate a pregnancy necessary to save her own life.
I’m staying in California.
Richard deSaulles, Chula Vista