by Jordan Boyd at The Federalist
In a landmark decision that will save thousands of preborn lives, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to “set the record straight” and overturn Roe v. Wade on Friday.
“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the opinion states.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.”
In deciding to uphold a Missippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of gestation, the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling will hand legislative authority on the issue of killing babies in the womb back to the states. Some states such as Texas have already implemented pro-life laws that effectively ban abortion.
Justice Samuel Alito authored the majority opinion which was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. In their opinion, Alito noted that “Not only was there no support for such a constitutional right until shortly before Roe, but abortion had long been a crime in every single State.”
“At common law, abortion was criminal in at least some stages of pregnancy and was regarded as unlawful and could have very serious consequences at all stages. American law followed the common law until a wave of statutory restrictions in the 1800s expanded criminal liability for abortions,” Alito wrote. “Roe either ignored or misstated this history, and Casey declined to reconsider Roe’s faulty historical analysis. It is therefore important to set the record straight.”
Instead of joining the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts filed a concurring opinion. The court’s three Democrat-nominated justices dissented.
Alito berated Roberts’ concurrence for doing “exactly what it criticizes Roe for doing: pulling ‘out of thin air’ a test that ‘[n]o party or amicus asked the Court to adopt.’”
“The concurrence would ‘leave for another day whether to reject any right to an abortion at all,’ and would hold only that if the Constitution protects any such right, the right ends once women have had ‘a reasonable opportunity’ to obtain an abortion,” Alito wrote. “There are serious problems with this approach, and it is revealing that nothing like it was recommended by either party.”
Despite facing a left-wing intimidation campaign…
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