Abortion
The issue of a woman's right to choose an abortion is one of the most contentious and one which has most come to represent the debate about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.
The Roe v Wade decision was one of the most politically important decisions of the twentieth century. It came at a time when the issue of women’s rights was gaining importance and support in the USA. It took on political significance because the issue aligned along party lines as the ‘pro-choice’ lobby (those who supported the decision) became closely associated with the Democratic Party, while the ‘pro-life’ lobby (those who opposed the decision) became closely associated with the Republicans.
In 1973, when the Court issued its landmark Roe v. Wade opinion, the vote was 7-to-2, with five Republican-appointed justices in the majority. But since then, the court's composition has moved inexorably to the ideological right, with the court's three newest justices appointed by President Trump. At the same time, however, public opinion polls have shown large majorities supporting abortion rights in most cases. Those approval ratings have remained remarkably stable over the years. On the Supreme Court, however, the centrist conservatives are gone, replaced by justices more passionately opposed to the notion of a constitutional right to abortion. So the question now is: How fast and far does the court want to move?
Food and Drug Administration v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, et al. January 2021
The US Supreme Court reinstated a requirement that women visit a hospital or clinic to obtain a drug used for medication-induced abortions, lifting an order by a lower court allowing the drug to be posted or delivered during the coronavirus pandemic.
The court’s three liberal justices said they would have denied the Trump administration’s request while litigation over the dispute continued in lower courts. The Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Roberts, said the dispute was not generally about the right to abortion but rather about courts’ deference to government decisions related to the pandemic.
November 2021 The Supreme Court heard a challenge to a Texas law that bans most abortions after as early as six weeks of pregnancy, the court said Friday. However, the court deferred a request from the Biden administration to block enforcement of the law by vacating a lower court’s ruling.
SB8, the Texas abortion ban deputizes private citizens to sue anyone who assists in an abortion after six weeks’ gestation. In a ruling in December 2021, the court held that a lawsuit by Texas abortion providers could go forward – but only on narrow grounds.
June 2022-The supreme court ruled there is no constitutional right to abortion in the United States, upending the landmark Roe v Wade case from nearly 50 years ago in a rare reversal of long-settled law that will fracture reproductive rights in America. Joe Biden called the ruling a “tragic error” and the Republicans celebrating it “wrong, extreme and out of touch”.
The US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs Wade has highlighted the growing power of its conservative majority and raised questions about how far it might go in reconsidering precedents on other social issues such as contraception and same-sex marriage. The ruling handed down on Friday upheld a state law in Mississippi banning abortion after 15 weeks — and then took a step further to overturn the Roe decision of 1973 that has enshrined the constitutional right to an abortion for nearly 50 years. Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the majority opinion, said that the Roe decision had been “egregiously wrong from the start”, expressing a view held by many conservative legal scholars and activists who have fought a decades-long battle to overturn it. “It is time to heed the constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” he added, in a decision that was joined by fellow conservatives Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s judgment, but not the more expansive majority opinion
Michele Goodwin, professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, said the court in its decision on Friday has accepted “Mississippi’s invitation to rid the country of a national right . . . such that these issues will now devolve to something that is closest to the time that we had in American slavery, where there were free states and there were states in which people’s . . . independence [and] freedom were not recognised”. The abortion decision also demonstrates the waning power of John Roberts as a moderating influence on his more conservative colleagues. Roberts has in the past seemed eager to broker decisions that avoided seismic changes on divisive social issues, such as the 5-4 ruling that narrowly upheld former president Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law. But his ability to serve as a swing vote has diminished as the court’s conservative wing has grown.
Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization
Brief Summary
Since the Dobbs ruling, state abortion laws have changed.
Older laws on the books banning abortion went into effect. States with laws set to ban abortion in the case of Roe being overturned went into effect.
In Mississippi, abortion bans forced a 13-year-old girl to carry out a pregnancy from rape. Texas and Oklahoma have passed laws that empower private citizens to sue clinics, healthcare workers, and individuals for helping someone obtain an abortion, and lawmakers in Texas and Missouri have sought to make it illegal to obtain out-of-state abortions. Currently, 14 of the 50 US states have criminalized nearly all abortions, depriving access to 18 million women and girls of reproductive age. Another 17 states have banned abortions starting at 6 to 26 weeks of pregnancy.
The 2024 election was a mixed bag for abortion rights. Voters in seven states moved to protect abortion access by passing ballot initiatives to include protections for reproductive rights in state constitutions. But similar measures in three other states failed—a blow to abortion-rights supporters. And the country ultimately decided to reelect the man who has claimed credit for the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade: former President Donald Trump.
The 2024 election was a mixed bag for abortion rights.
Voters in seven states moved to protect abortion access by passing ballot initiatives to include protections for reproductive rights in state constitutions. But similar measures in three other states failed—a blow to abortion-rights supporters. And the country ultimately decided to reelect the man who has claimed credit for the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade: former President Donald Trump.