3 years ago
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In a scathing dissent of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on Friday, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan accuse the court of discarding the “balance” the court struck for half a century as it found a middle ground between “respecting a woman as an autonomous being” and protecting the life of a fetus.
“Roe and Casey well understood the difficulty and divisiveness of the abortion issue. The Court knew that Americans hold profoundly different views about the ‘moral[ity]’ of ‘terminating a pregnancy, even in its earliest stage.’ And the Court recognized that ‘the State has legitimate interests from the outset of the pregnancy in protecting’ the ‘life of the fetus that may become a child’ …So the Court struck a balance, as it often does when values and goals compete,” the justices wrote, citing Casey. “Today, the Court discards that balance.”
The court on Friday overturned Roe on a 5-4 vote, paving a path for dozens of states to ban the procedure. The decision will transform the reproductive health in the country, giving states the power to control who has the right to the procedure. Already, more than half of U.S. states have already or will pass laws that ban abortion, while a multitude of others have strict regulations on the procedure.
The liberal justices warned of how far state leaders could push this newfound power, even beyond imposing criminal penalties on abortion providers.
“Perhaps, in the wake of today’s decision, a state law will criminalize the woman’s conduct too, incarcerating or fining her for daring to seek or obtain an abortion,” the dissent says. “And as Texas has recently shown, a State can turn neighbor against neighbor, enlisting fellow citizens in the effort to root out anyone who tries to get an abortion, or to assist another in doing so.”
The justices concluded by quoting the words of late Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter, who in deciding Casey, wrote that the court would pay a “terrible price” for overruling Roe.
“The Justices who wrote those words — O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter — they were judges of wisdom. They would not have won any contests for the kind of ideological purity some court watchers want Justices to deliver. But if there were awards for Justices who left this Court better than they found it? And who for that reason left this country better? And the rule of law stronger? Sign those Justices up,” the dissent said.
O’Connor, Kennedy and Souter also knew that the “legitimacy of the court” is formed over time, and that its reputation can be tarnished “much more quickly,” the justices said, adding that with Friday’s decision to overrule Roe and Casey, “the Court betrays its guiding principles.”
“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.
English (US) ·