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‘Horrific’: Millions lose right to abortions in the US as Supreme Court overturns Roe V Wade

Roe v Wade has sensationally been overturned and abortions will now be criminalised in many US states without exemptions for rape or incest victims.

Megan Palin in the US
8 min read
June 25, 2022 - 9:21AM
Millions lose right to abortions in the US as Supreme Court overturns Roe V Wade

Millions of women in the US will lose the legal right to have an abortion after the Supreme Court overturned a landmark ruling which for nearly half a century had permitted terminations during the first two trimesters of pregnancy.

Roe v Wade, which in 1973 provided the constitutional right to abortions up until foetal viability, was overturned on Friday, in a decision that promises to further drive political divisions across America.

The court voted 6-3, along party lines, in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organisation, which involved Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

“Abortion presents a profound moral question,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion.

“The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.

“The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”

Abortion rights will now be determined by individual states. Almost half of the country’s states have or will pass laws that ban abortion while others have enacted strict measures regulating the procedure.  

READ: Backstreet abortions: Illegal, dingy clinics advertise ‘safe … pain free’ procedures

Some dormant state laws will be reactivated that will make it illegal to have an abortion even in cases of rape or incest. Anyone who performs an abortion in states that criminalise it will be charged with a felony and face up to 15 years jail time.

The final opinion was strikingly similar to the draft written by Alito that was leaked to Politico earlier this year. It repeats his scornful language towards the original Roe v. Wade decision that enshrined abortion rights.

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito wrote.

“Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have inflamed debate and deepened division.”

The US Supreme Court on Friday ended the right to abortion in a seismic ruling that shreds half a century of constitutional protections on one of the most divisive and bitterly fought issues in American political life. Picture: Olivier Douliery / AFP.
The US Supreme Court on Friday ended the right to abortion in a seismic ruling that shreds half a century of constitutional protections on one of the most divisive and bitterly fought issues in American political life. Picture: Olivier Douliery / AFP.

Effective immediately

The 26 states expected to bring in new restrictions on abortions include Texas, Louisiana, Idaho, Mississippi and Missouri – where Governor Mike Parson has already issued a proclamation that will implement the state’s ban on abortion.

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed a bill that bans nearly all abortions starting at fertilisation. The new law, which takes effect immediately, is the most restrictive abortion ban in the country.

Ten others have pre-1973 laws that could go into force or legislation that would ban abortion after six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant.

Women in states with strict anti-abortion laws will either have to continue with their pregnancy, undergo a clandestine abortion or obtain abortion pills, or travel to another state where the procedure remains legal.

Following the ruling, the only abortion clinic in West Virginia announced it is no longer performing abortions as of Friday.

In a statement on Facebook, the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia said it is not performing the procedure anymore due to “criminal code from 1882 that criminalises abortion for both the provider and patient with a felony prison sentence up [to] 10 years.”

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 13 states have adopted so-called “trigger laws” that will ban abortion virtually immediately.

Although a trigger law in Texas does not go into effect for weeks, Planned Parenthood clinics across the state halted abortion services on Friday as officials reviewed the decision and the possibility, raised by the Texas attorney general, that decades-old anti-abortion laws that were never repealed could now be enforced in the state. “The pause in our abortion care,” said Jeffrey Hons, the president of Planned Parenthood South Texas, “is the right thing to do so that we have time to ensure that Planned Parenthood organisations remain compliant with the law.”

Anti-abortion activists hug outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 24, 2022. Picture: Mandel Ngan / AFP.
Anti-abortion activists hug outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 24, 2022. Picture: Mandel Ngan / AFP.

Several Democratic-ruled states, anticipating an influx, have taken steps to facilitate abortion and three of them – California, Oregon and Washington – issued a joint pledge to defend access in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision. Travel is expensive, however, and abortion rights groups say any new restrictions will severely impact poor women, many of whom are Black or Hispanic.

US President Joe Biden criticised the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade and called for Congress to codify the right to an abortion – something that’s unlikely given the split balance of power in the Senate.

“It’s a sad day for the court and the country. Today the Supreme Court of the United States expressly took away a constitutional right from the American people that it had already recognised,” Biden said in delivered remarks from the White House on Friday afternoon local time.

“It was three justices named by one president, Donald Trump, who were the core of today’s decision to up-end the scales of justice and eliminate a fundamental right for women in this country. Make no mistake, this decision is a culmination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law.

“It’s a realisation of an extreme ideology and a tragic error of the Supreme Court in my view.

“The court has done what it’s never done before, expressly take away a constitutional right that is so fundamental to so many Americans that had already been recognised. The court’s decision to do so will have real and immediate consequences.”

A pro-choice supporter cries outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 24, 2022. Picture: Olivier Douliery / AFP.
A pro-choice supporter cries outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 24, 2022. Picture: Olivier Douliery / AFP.

Alito was joined in his opinion by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Chief Justice John Roberts did not join the majority, writing in a concurring opinion that he would not have overturned Roe but instead would have only upheld Mississippi’s law banning abortions after 15 weeks.

In his concurrence, Roberts wrote that Alito’s opinion was “thoughtful and thorough, but those virtues cannot compensate for the fact that its dramatic and consequential ruling is unnecessary to decide the case before us.”

“Ample evidence thus suggests that a 15-week ban provides sufficient time, absent rare circumstances, for a woman ‘to decide for herself’ whether to terminate her pregnancy,” the chief justice went on before adding that both Alito’s opinion and the dissent by liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan “display a relentless freedom from doubt on the legal issue that I cannot share.”

In a joint dissenting opinion, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan heavily criticised the majority, closing: “With sorrow – for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection -we dissent.”

Justice Clarence Thomas called for potentially overturning Supreme Court rulings that protect same-sex marriage and access to birth control in an opinion concurrent to the decision ending federal abortion rights.

The conservative judge wrote that the court should “reconsider” other cases that fall under the court’s previous “due process” precedents, which include rulings that establish LGBTQ and contraceptive rights.

“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” he wrote.

The 74-year-old justice was referring to a 1965 ruling, Griswold v. Connecticut, that allows married couples to access birth control. He’s also referencing a 2003 ruling, Lawrence v. Texas, that forbids states from outlawing consensual gay sex, and Obergefell v. Hodges, a 2015 decision that established the right to same-sex marriage.

Trump: ‘God made the decision’

The ruling was made possible by Republican former president Donald Trump’s nomination of three conservative justices – Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett.

“Today’s decision, which is the biggest WIN for LIFE in a generation, along with other decisions that have been announced recently, were only made possible because I delivered everything as promised, including nominating and getting three highly respected and strong Constitutionalists confirmed to the United States Supreme Court,” Trump said in a statement.

“It was my great honour to do so! I did not cave to the Radical Left Democrats, their partners in the Fake News Media, or the RINOs who are likewise the true, but silent, enemy of the people.

Trump told Fox when asked about his own role in bringing about the ruling that “God made the decision.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned Republicans in response to the Supreme Court decision, saying in a statement, “Because of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Party and their supermajority on the Supreme Court, American women today have less freedom than their mothers.”

Pelosi further said there would be more restrictions on reproductive health care, claiming, “Republicans want to arrest doctors for offering reproductive care and women for terminating a pregnancy. GOP extremists are even threatening to criminalise contraception, as well as in-vitro fertilisation and post-miscarriage care.”

She called the ruling “outrageous and heart-wrenching.”

Huge crowds of anti- and pro-abortion activists have taken to the streets in a highly-combustible demonstration outside the court following its ruling.

Additional Capitol Police officers have lined up along barriers blocking the court building and the Capitol, and one officer said police were preparing for the crowd to grow in the evening after people working during the day on Friday finished work and joined. Several activist groups have also called on supporters to come to the court after 5pm (7am AET), The NY Times reports.

Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson wrote on Twitter: “The Supreme Court has now officially given politicians permission to control what we do with our bodies, deciding that we can no longer be trusted to determine the course for our own lives.

“But make no mistake — we are a movement that will demand we are treated like equal citizens.”

‘Worst case scenario’

Anti-abortion group March for Life praised the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn federal protections for abortion.

“Today, the ability to determine whether and when to limit abortion was returned to the American people who have every right to enact laws like Mississippi’s which protect mothers and unborn babies after 15 weeks,” March for Life said in a statement.

The conservative-dominated court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision that enshrined a woman's right to an abortion and said individual states can permit or restrict the procedure themselves. Picture: Olivier Douliery / AFP.
The conservative-dominated court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision that enshrined a woman's right to an abortion and said individual states can permit or restrict the procedure themselves. Picture: Olivier Douliery / AFP.

The group called Roe v. Wade an “unpopular and extreme” abortion policy that had been imposed on the US Polling shows 58 per cent of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

“We are so grateful to the countless pro-life people of goodwill who contributed and sacrificed to make today possible – including the millions of those who have marched for life over the years – and we recognise that this is just the beginning of our work to advance policies that protect life. We will continue to march until abortion is unthinkable because equality begins in the womb,” March for Life said.

Mini Timmaraju, president of pro-abortion group NARAL, described the court’s decision as “the worst-case scenario” and warned the anti-abortion movement and its political allies want to enact a nationwide ban on abortion.

“The impact on the real lives of real people will be devastating. The Supreme Court has given the green light to extremist state lawmakers who will waste no time springing into action to put in place total bans on abortion,” Timmaraju said in a statement.

“But it is not the end of this fight. The 8 in 10 Americans who support the legal right to abortion will not let this stand. There is an election in November, and extremist politicians will learn: when you come for our rights, we come for your seats.”

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Original URL: https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/millions-to-lose-right-to-abortions-in-the-us-as-supreme-court-overturns-roe-v-wade/news-story/b58053e3b6f08ad5239120c88ed0bed8