Supreme

Court overturns Roe v. Wade,

ending right to abortion upheld for decades
Updated June 24, 2022 · 10:43 AM ET

Nina Totenberg and Sarah McCammon

NPR

In a historic and far-reaching decision, the U.S. Supreme Court officially reversed Roe v. Wade on
Friday, declaring that the constitutional right to abortion, upheld for nearly a half century, no longer
exists.

Writing for the court majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that the 1973 Roe ruling and repeated
subsequent high court decisions reaffirming Roe "must be overruled" because they were "egregiously
wrong," the arguments "exceptionally weak" and so "damaging" that they amounted to "an abuse of
judicial authority."

The decision, most of which was leaked in early May, means that abortion rights will be rolled back in
nearly half of the states immediately, with more restrictions likely to follow. For all practical purposes,
abortion will not be available in large swaths of the country. The decision may well mean too that the
court itself, as well as the abortion question, will become a focal point in the upcoming fall elections
and in the fall and thereafter.

Joining the Alito opinion were Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by the first President Bush,
and the three Trump appointees — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by President George W. Bush, concurred in the judgment only,
and would have limited the decision to upholding the Mississippi law at issue in the case, which
banned abortions after 15 weeks. Calling the decision "a serious jolt to the legal system," he said that
both the majority and dissent displayed "a relentless freedom from doubt on the legal issue that I
cannot share."

Dissenting were Justices Stephen Breyer, appointed by President Clinton, and Justices Sonia
Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, appointed by President Obama. The said that the court decision means
that "young women today will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers."
Indeed, they said the court's opinion means that "from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has
no rights to speak of. A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term even at the steepest personal
and familial costs."

"With sorrow — for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today
lost a fundamental constitutional protection — we dissent," they wrote.

Writing for the majority, Alito said forthrightly that abortion is a matter to be decided by states and
the voters in the states. "We hold," he wrote, that "the Constitution does not confer a right to
abortion." As to what standard the courts should apply in the event that a state regulation is
challenged, Alito said any state regulation of abortion is presumptively valid and "must be sustained if
there is a rational basis on which the legislature could have thought" it was serving "legitimate state
interests," including "respect for and preservation of prenatal life at all stages of development." In
addition, he noted, states are entitled to regulate abortion to eliminate "gruesome and barbaric"
medical procedures; to "preserve the integrity of the medical profession"; and to prevent
discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or disability, including barring abortion in cases of fetal
abnormality.

Ultimately, the translation of all that is that states appear to be completely free to ban abortions for
any reason.

The next steps on abortion across the country will play out in a variety of ways, almost all of them
resulting in abortion bans.

Several states — among them Mississippi, North Carolina, and Wisconsin — still have decades-old
abortion bans on their books; with Roe overturned, those states could revert to a pre-Roe
environment. Officials in such states could seek to enforce old laws, or ask the courts to reinstate
them. For example, a Michigan law dating back to 1931 would make abortion a felony. Gov. Gretchen
Whitmer, a Democrat, has been working to try to block that law.

Another path to banning abortion involves "trigger bans," newer laws pushed through by anti-
abortion rights legislators in many states in anticipation of the Supreme Court's action. Some 15 states
– in the South, West and Midwest – have such laws in place, according to CRR and Guttmacher, but
they fall into different categories.

Some states will act quickly to ban abortion. According to a new analysis by the Guttmacher Institute,
South Dakota, Kentucky and Louisiana have laws in place that lawmakers designed explicitly to take
effect immediately upon the fall of the Roe precedent. Idaho, Tennessee, and Texas – where most
abortions are already illegal after about six weeks of pregnancy – have similar laws, which would take
effect after 30 days. Guttmacher says seven other "trigger ban" states have laws that would require
state officials such as governors or attorneys general to take action to implement them.
What Is Amy Coney Barrett's Stance on
Abortion Rights and Roe v. Wade?
BY ERICA GONZALES / OCT 26 2020, 8:35 PM EDT

Harper’s Bazaar

The Senate has confirmed President Donald Trump's nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, to the
Supreme Court. Judge Barrett will fill the spot left vacant by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who
passed away on September 18 after nearly three decades on the bench.
Barrett, 48, is a 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge and was previously on Trump's SCOTUS short list
before he nominated Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 to succeed retiring justice Anthony Kennedy. Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is likely to approve her nomination as he said shortly after Justice
Ginsburg's passing that he plans to confirm the president's selection.

Considered a "home run by conservative Christians and anti- abortion activists," according to The
New York Times, Barrett's arrival to the Supreme Court has supporters of abortion rights questioning
if she will overturn the landmark decision of Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal in the United
States. A devout Catholic, Barrett has personal opinions against abortion but has said that she won't
let those beliefs affect her work as a judge.

In 2016, Barrett implied that the Supreme Court likely wouldn't overturn the overall decision on Roe
but that specifics on access and state-sanctioned restrictions could change. "But I think the question
of whether people women have a right to an abortion, I don't think that would change," she said in a
talk at Jacksonville University, per NPR. “But I think the question of whether people can get very late-
term abortions, you know, how many restrictions can be put on clinics, I think that will change."

During the nomination process for the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2017, Barrett was asked about a 1988
Notre Dame Law School article in which she referred to abortion as "always immoral." In response,
Barrett explained that she and her co-author were recounting recounting "the Catholic Church’s
teaching that “abortion . . . is always immoral." She added, "If I am confirmed, my views on this or any
other question will have no bearing on the discharge of my duties as a judge."

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List, has high praise
for Barrett. "She is the perfect combination of brilliant jurist and woman who brings the argument to
the court that is potentially the contrary to the views of the sitting women justices," Dannenfelser said
in a statement to CBS News. Americans United for Life and the president of Judicial Crisis Network
have also supported Barrett.

As a law professor for Notre Dame, Barrett signed a newspaper ad opposing"abortion on demand,"
according to The New York Times. She was one of the hundreds who signed the advertisement, but
even so, the Times pointed out that this was her first direct display of her views on abortion.

"We, the following citizens of Michiana [a region overlapping Indiana and Michigan], oppose abortion
on demand and defend the right to life from fertilization to natural death," read part of the statement
by St. Joseph CountyRight to Life, one of the country's "oldest continuously active pro-life
organizations." It's now named Right to Life Michiana.

Later, the statement said, "It's time to put an end to the barbaric legacy of Roe v. Wade and restore
laws that protect the lives of unborn children."

In 2012, she also signed an opposition to the Affordable Care Act's requirement that employers allow
contraceptives to be included in health insurance plans. "The reason for the original bipartisan uproar
was the administration’s insistence that religious employers, be they institutions or individuals,
provide insurance that covered services they regard as gravely immoral and unjust," part of the
statement reads.