On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that will decide the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks gestation.
The state of Mississippi is asking the Supreme Court to strike down a lower court’s decision blocking its 15-week abortion ban from taking effect.
Pro-Life rally Singing the National Anthem outside the Supreme Court this morning ahead of oral arguments in a Mississippi abortion case challenging Roe v. Wade.pic.twitter.com/q8O2VXWtK9
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) December 1, 2021
This outcome of the case would not lead to the full abolition of Roe v. Wade, but is a first step in sending the issue back to the states. Even if Roe were overturned tomorrow, abortion would still be legal — at least for a while — in all 50 states. But at least the issue would be restored to the legislative process, rather than judicial, and residents of the several states would once again be free to choose.
What makes Dobbs worrisome to the left is that it could be the first time the Court has banned abortion before fetal viability outside the womb, which abortion advocates see as a slippery slope that could eventually lead to the end of legalized abortion — at least nationally.
Justice Clarence Thomas, now the Court’s senior justice, has in some ways been anticipating this case since he was appointed three decades ago. He has long been an outspoken opponent of Roe: “Our abortion precedents are grievously wrong and should be overruled,” he wrote just last year. “The Constitution does not constrain the States’ ability to regulate or even prohibit abortion.”
Instead of covering the arguments objectively on their live blog, the New York Times is already bashing Thomas.
With the Court theoretically split 6-3 in favor of conservatives, the chances the Mississippi law will be upheld appear strong. Another abortion case, Texas’ SB 8, which blocks abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, already awaits a decision; the number of abortions in the state immediately fell sharply by half in its aftermath.
“I think the Texas law, which tries to evade the requirements of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey by using private lawsuits for enforcement, is vulnerable to obvious critiques and liable to be abused. It’s not a model I would ever cite for pro-life legislation,” columnist Ross Douthat wrote in a lengthy Tuesday New York Times piece, before adding, “There is no way to seriously deny that abortion is a form of killing. At a less advanced stage of scientific understanding, it was possible to believe that the embryo or fetus was somehow inert or vegetative until so-called quickening, months into pregnancy. But we now know the embryo is not merely a cell with potential, like a sperm or ovum, or a constituent part of human tissue, like a skin cell. Rather, a distinct human organism comes into existence at conception, and every stage of your biological life, from infancy and childhood to middle age and beyond, is part of a single continuous process that began when you were just a zygote.”
Related: Supreme Court Determines the Fate of Roe v. Wade
One need not be religious to understand that edicts against the slaughter of innocents go back thousands of years. No previous society has adopted abortion as a moral good, as American “progressives” have.
Yet Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen released a cliche-laden statement about a “revolution” if the left doesn’t get their way.
“I’ve lived the consequences of the pre-Roe era – I had friends in college who were forced to seek dangerous back-alley abortions because women across the country were denied access to critical family planning services,” she claimed. “We cannot allow Republican lawmakers to turn back the clock on women’s reproductive health and rights, which is precisely what the Mississippi case seeks to do. It is time to sound the alarm.”
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., says she’s “optimistic” the Supreme Court will uphold Roe v. Wade. (H/T Matt Wall) pic.twitter.com/aArq5au4Q1
— Tyler Olson (@TylerOlson1791) December 1, 2021
Undoubtedly the left, which depends on narrowly-decided court decisions to get what it cannot achieve via congressional legislation or at the voting booth, will “sound the alarm hard,” no matter how many unborn children must be murdered.
Meanwhile, Wednesday morning, Justice Sandra Sotomayor — the most radical and least impressive justice — is already clashing with Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart, bashing religion, declaring that three-quarters of women in America are poor, denying that science has changed over the last few decades, and playing politics.
Justice Sotomayor is comparing babies in the womb to dead people.
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) December 1, 2021
When Chief Justice John Roberts questioned Center for Reproductive Rights lawyer Julie Rikelman about why a ban on abortion after 15 weeks doesn’t give women enough time to choose to terminate a pregnancy — and the U.S. is in the company of North Korea and China in allowing late-term abortions — Rikleman argued that “states will rush to ban abortion at virtually any point in pregnancy” and abortion is critical for a woman’s rights and participation in society.
Justice Samuel Alito tangled with Rikleman and explained that women have the same interest in ending a pregnancy after the viability line is crossed, and “the fetus has an interest in having a life,” both before and after viability.