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WASHINGTON, DC – The Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade on Friday, holding in the Dobbs case that the Constitution does not include a right to abortion and returning the issue of abortion laws and regulations to state legislatures.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the Supreme Court in Friday’s 5-4 decision:
Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return the authority to the people and their elected representatives.
Roe was handed down in 1973 in a 7-2 decision, holding that the U.S. Constitution includes a constitutional right to abortion, despite the fact that abortion is not found in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution, and the nation went more than 180 years without ever noticing it existed. It has been one of the most divisive legal issues in American history.
An early draft of Alito’s opinion leaked in May, the first such leak of a full opinion in the 233-year history of the Supreme Court, leading the left to violent protests, including destroying a pro-life center in Wisconsin, vandalizing churches, and threatening protests at the home of conservatives justices in violation of federal law.
These threats have culminated in what was almost an assassination attempt of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which went seemingly unnoticed by President Joe Biden – who did not speak out to condemn it – and has led to rapid action on a new federal law to protect the justices. The court majority evidently stood firm against the threats and public pressure, overruling Roe and the later revision of Roe in 1992, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
With Roe overruled, the issue of abortion now goes back to the states to pass whatever restrictions on abortions the voters of each state choose to adopt.
Alito’s majority opinion is 79 pages long. This is a developing story, and will be updated throughout the day.
The case is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, No. 19-1392 in the Supreme Court of the United States.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
DOBBS, STATE HEALTH OFFICER OF THE
MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, ET AL. v.
JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR
THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
No. 19–1392. Argued December 1, 2021—Decided June 24, 2022
Held: The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.
JUSTICE ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court.
Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views. Some believe fervently that a human person comes into being at conception and that abortion ends an innocent life. Others feel just as strongly that any regulation of abortion invades a woman’s right to control her own body and prevents women from achieving full equality. Still others in a third group think
that abortion should be allowed under some but not all circumstances, and those within this group hold a variety of views about the particular restrictions that should be imposed.
For the first 185 years after the adoption of the Constitution, each State was permitted to address this issue in accordance with the views of its citizens. Then, in 1973, this Court decided Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113. Even though the Constitution makes no mention of abortion, the Court held that it confers a broad right to obtain one. It did not claim that American law or the common law had ever recognized such a right, and its survey of history ranged from the constitutionally irrelevant (e.g., its discussion of abortion in antiquity) to the plainly incorrect (e.g., its assertion that abortion was probably never a crime under the common law).
After cataloging a wealth of other information having no bearing on the meaning of the Constitution, the opinion concluded with a numbered set of rules much like those that might be found in a statute enacted by a legislature.
Under this scheme, each trimester of pregnancy was regulated differently, but the most critical line was drawn at roughly the end of the second trimester, which, at the time, corresponded to the point at which a fetus was thought to achieve “viability,” i.e., the ability to survive outside the womb. Although the Court acknowledged that States had a legitimate interest in protecting “potential life,”1 it found
that this interest could not justify any restriction on previability abortions. The Court did not explain the basis for this line, and even abortion supporters have found it hard to defend Roe’s reasoning. One prominent constitutional scholar wrote that he “would vote for a statute very much like the one the Court end[ed] up drafting” if he were “a legislator,” but his assessment of Roe was memorable and
brutal: Roe was “not constitutional law” at all and gave “almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.”2
At the time of Roe, 30 States still prohibited abortion at all stages. In the years prior to that decision, about a third of the States had liberalized their laws, but Roe abruptly ended that political process. It imposed the same highly restrictive regime on the entire Nation, and it effectively struck down the abortion laws of every single State.3 As Justice Byron White aptly put it in his dissent, the decision
represented the “exercise of raw judicial power,” 410 U. S., at 222, and it sparked a national controversy that has embittered our political culture for a half century.”
.. ..
“The law at issue in this case, Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, see Miss. Code Ann. §41–41–191 (2018), contains this central provision: “Except in a medical emergency or in the case of a severe fetal abnormality, a person shall not intentionally or knowingly perform . . . or induce an abortion of an unborn human being if the probable gestational age of the unborn human being has been determined to be
greater than fifteen (15) weeks.” §4(b).14
To support this Act, the legislature made a series of factual findings. It began by noting that, at the time of enactment, only six countries besides the United States “permit[ted] nontherapeutic or elective abortion-on-demand after the twentieth week of gestation.”15 §2(a). The legislature then found that at 5 or 6 weeks’ gestational age an “unborn human being’s heart begins beating”; at 8 weeks the “unborn human being begins to move about in the womb”; at 9 weeks “all basic physiological functions are present”; at 10 weeks “vital organs begin to function,” and “[h]air, fingernails, and toenails . . . begin to form”; at 11 weeks “an unborn human being’s diaphragm is developing,” and he or she may “move about freely in the womb”; and at 12 weeks the “unborn human being” has “taken on ‘the human form’ in all relevant respects.” §2(b)(i) (quoting Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U. S. 124, 160 (2007)). It found that most abortions after 15 weeks employ “dilation and evacuation procedures which involve the use of surgical instruments to crush and tear the unborn child,” and it concluded that the “intentional commitment of such acts for nontherapeutic or elective reasons is a barbaric practice, dangerous for the maternal patient, and demeaning to the medical profession.” §2(b)(i)(8).
.. ..
VII
We end this opinion where we began. Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.
The judgment of the Fifth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Complete decision at:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Supreme Court Reverses Roe, Overturns Constitutional Right to Abortion and Returns Abortion Law to the States
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The 213-page Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs -v- Jackson (Mississippi case) is FOUND HERE. The ruling in the Dobbs case was 6-3 in favor of allowing Mississippi to place limits on abortion after 15 weeks. However, in combination with the Dobbs decision the court has overturned (by a 5-4 vote) the 1972 Roe -vs- Wade decision that created a constitutional right to abortion.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the majority on the Dobbs decision (Mississippi) but said he did not agree with the decision to overturn Roe. The vote to overturn Roe was 5-4. Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion.
Due to an unprecedented leak in the Alito draft opinion in May, the Roe decision was anticipated. The leaked draft opinion showed that a majority of the justices were privately poised to remove a constitutional right for abortion; today that step was taken.
SCOTUS BLOG – […] Alito began his 79-page opinion by observing that abortion “presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views.” But the Constitution does not refer to abortion at all, Alito stressed, and nothing in the Constitution implicitly protects the right to an abortion.
Although the Supreme Court’s decisions in Roe and Casey established such a right, Alito continued, those decisions should nonetheless be overruled despite the principle of stare decisis – the idea that courts should not overturn their prior precedent unless there is a compelling reason to do so. Noting that some of the Supreme Court’s other landmark decisions, such as Brown v. Board of Education, rejecting the “separate but equal” doctrine, had overruled precedent, Alito emphasized that Roe was “egregiously wrong and deeply damaging” and – along with Casey – should not be allowed to stand. Instead, Alito concluded, the issue of abortion should “return … to the people’s representatives.” (read more)
Abortion rights activists and politicians have been preparing for this moment for two months. Immediately after the decision to overturn Roe was released all of the far-left activists, media stenographers and politicians began reacting.
This supreme court ruling will lead several news cycles and opposing it will form the cornerstone of the 2022 Democrat mid-term election campaign in every state. The media have been polling this abortion issue since the draft leak in early May.
More at:
Democrat Rep. Jackie Speier Incites Violence, Calls on Pro-Abortion Activists to “Armor Up” Because “There’s a War Out There” (VIDEO)
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Democrat Rep. Jackie Speier (CA) incited violence on Friday after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade.
Abortion laws will now be decided by the states.
“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” Justice Alito wrote.
Democrat lawmakers such as Maxine Waters and AOC immediately called for an insurrection.
Rep. Speier appeared on far-left MSNBC and straight up incited violence.
“There is a war out there and we need to recognize that we’ve got to armor up,” Speier said.
Democrat Rep. Ayanna Pressley chimed in, “That’s right. This is not a drill.”
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