Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer鈥檚 interpretation of facts and data.
Making Sense of Our Post-Roe World
For the first time in this country鈥檚 history, the Supreme Court took away a fundamental constitutional right it had previously recognized.
Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey are dead, taking with them the right to an abortion.
We鈥檙e officially living in a post-Roe world.
Knowing this day would come doesn鈥檛 make the reality any easier to process. It鈥檚 tough. It鈥檚 dark. But as trite as this may sound so soon after such a devastating loss of autonomy and humanity at the Supreme Court, the fight is far from over鈥攁nd I, for one, am going nowhere until it鈥檚 finished.
Let鈥檚 get some basics out of the way. Friday鈥檚 6鈥3 decision in is catastrophic for millions of people in this country, for the rule of law, and for . Six unelected justices defied the Constitution, the will of the people, and their own sworn Senate testimony to declare there is no constitutional right to abortion.
As of publishing, nine of the 13 states with 鈥渢rigger鈥 bans on their books鈥擜labama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, and Wisconsin鈥攈ave already criminalized abortion within their borders. The other four states will soon follow. By summer鈥檚 end, abortion will be illegal in large swaths of this country. And in those states where the right remains, access will be strained in unimaginable ways, meaning no state is an abortion-safe state.
And while Justice Samuel Alito may have promised in his majority opinion that the decision isn鈥檛 really a threat to other fundamental privacy rights, like the rights to contraception, sexual privacy, and marriage equality, Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion, specifically calls on Conservative advocates to offer up a test case to the Court to challenge each of those rights.
This is the beginning of a new puritanism in this country, ushered in by the Alito Court.
But, like the puritanism of this country鈥檚 past, this modern version will require state violence to enforce it. So I suppose it makes sense that the Court overturned Roe just 24 hours after releasing , a decision that radically reinterprets the Second Amendment to practically require concealed carry across this country.
Conservatives previewed this coming puritanical violence when they passed a law that bans abortion as soon as six weeks and empowers citizen vigilantes to enforce it. The Supreme Court suggested Texas was just the beginning when it under cover of darkness last September.
And now we know it was.
When I first started covering the abortion rights fight at the Supreme Court, my writing would be into both the legal arguments and the political fights. Previous editors would gently or not-so-gently carve up blocks of quoted legalese that I insisted mattered and could be explained to non-lawyers. But honestly, I loved writing them.
I can鈥檛 do that with Dobbs v. Jackson Women鈥檚 Health Organization. The majority opinion is such an exercise of bad-faith jurisprudence鈥攁nd the political campaign to bring the case to the Court and presto change-o it to a direct challenge to Roe such a farce鈥攖hat there鈥檚 nothing more for me to engage with on the merits. The majority opinion snidely tosses away the constitutional reliance and interests of millions of people in this country by effectively saying, haha, actually, you are not people at all.
The joint dissent is, predictably, worth the read. Not only do Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor filet Alito鈥檚 cherry-picked originalism and the Conservative majority鈥檚 naked power grab, they also detail the actual harm that is already unfolding thanks to Alito鈥檚 bloodthirst.
鈥淧ower, not reason, is the new currency of this Court鈥檚 decisionmaking,鈥 the dissenting justices wrote, .
Power, not reason鈥攖hat鈥檚 what counts as the constitutional rule of law in the Alito Court.
The dissent continues:
“Mississippi鈥攁nd other States too鈥攌new exactly what they were doing in ginning up new legal challenges to Roe and Casey. The 15-week ban at issue here was enacted in 2018. Other States quickly followed: Between 2019 and 2021, eight States banned abortion procedures after six to eight weeks of pregnancy, and three States enacted all-out bans. Mississippi itself decided in 2019 that it had not gone far enough: The year after enacting the law under review, the State passed a 6-week restriction. A state senator who championed both Mississippi laws said the obvious out loud. 鈥淸A] lot of people thought,鈥 he explained, that 鈥渇inally, we have鈥 a conservative Court 鈥渁nd so now would be a good time to start testing the limits of Roe.鈥 In its petition for certiorari, the State had exercised a smidgen of restraint. It had urged the Court merely to roll back Roe and Casey, specifically assuring the Court that 鈥渢he questions presented in this petition do not require the Court to overturn鈥 those precedents. But as Mississippi grew ever more confident in its prospects, it resolved to go all in. It urged the Court to overrule Roe and Casey. Nothing but everything would be enough.”
Nothing but everything would be enough. And that鈥檚 all that needs to be said about the anti-choice movement following this decision. Do not be fooled that Friday marked the end of some fight on the part of the anti-choice movement. On the contrary, a whole new front has just now opened up.
This article was originally published by . It has been republished here with permission.
Jessica Mason Pieklo
is a Senior Vice President and Executive Editor. She is also the co-host of the Rewire News Group podcast Boom! Lawyered. She was part of the SCOTUSblog symposium on abortion rights following聽Whole Woman鈥檚 Health v. Hellerstedt聽and won the Excellence in Online Journalism award in 2018 from the Association of LGBTQ Journalists.聽
|