SCOTUS Upholds Federal Abortion Ban updated
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Short translation: They’re coming after the doctors.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking in the courtroom for the dissenters,
called the ruling “an alarming decision” that refuses “to take
seriously” the Court’s 1992 decisions reaffirming most of Roe v. Wade
and its 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart striking down a state partial-birth
abortion law.Ginsburg, in a lengthy statement, said “the Court’s opinion tolerates,
indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found
necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists. For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition
with no exception protecting a woman’s health.” She said the federal
ban “and the Court’s defense of it cannot be understood as anything other
than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court
— and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women’s lives. A
decision of the character the Court makes today should not have staying power.”That final comment, concluding remarks delivered without an open display
of emotion, clearly was a suggestion that the ruling might not survive new
appointments to the Court — just as the arrival of Chief Justice John G.
Roberts, Jr., and, especially, Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. — had led to
the switch she claimed had come about this time. Ginsburg pointedly noted
that the Court is “differently imposed that it was when we last considered
a restrictive abortion regulation” — in Stenberg in 2000.
UPDATE (10:42 p.m.): Great piece on SCOTUS “dishonesty” from the Times.
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