Roe is NO MORE

THE SUPREME COURT HAS OVERTURNED ROE V. WADE! I can hardly believe I am writing these words. Roe is gone. No longer precedent. Fifty years of the Supreme Court’s twisted reasoning about the extent to which it will or will not allow innocent babies in the womb to be protected is gone.

The Court held that “Roe and Casey must be overruled. 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.” Casey is the Supreme Courts’ ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey that created the “undue burden” test.

The result of today’s ruling is that the regulation of abortion will return to the states. Thirteen states have “trigger laws” already in place that will prohibit all abortions. Some of these take effect 30 days after the Court’s ruling in Dobbs. Several other states have enacted abortion laws that are currently enjoined by federal courts. Those laws will likely be restored. We will address the question of how those laws will be enforced in the coming weeks.

Tragically, other states, like California, are doubling down on their promotion of abortion and positioning themselves as abortion tourism destinations. As I write this, we are fighting a California bill that creates a right to self-induced abortion throughout pregnancy and even legalizes infanticide in certain cases.

Justice Alito wrote today’s opinion and is joined by Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Chief Justice Roberts, however, filed an opinion concurring only in the judgment upholding the 15-week abortion ban. Roberts wrote that while “The Court’s opinion is thoughtful and thorough…its dramatic and conse­quential ruling is unnecessary to decide the case before us.”

The majority opinion includes two lengthy discussions – and rebuttals – of the indefensible dissenting opinion of Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. As the majority notes, the dissent lacks “any serious discussion of the of the legitimacy of the States’ interest in protecting fetal life.”

As we celebrate the overturning of Roe, we are also well aware that we have just entered a new theater of action in the war on abortion. Just as the Allied landing at Normandy marked the beginning of the end of World War II, there remained much hard fighting until the final victory would be won.