Lee Heidhues 9.1.2021
Four men and one reactionary woman on the Supreme Court have turned back a woman’s right to choose. Can we now expect back alley abortions and clothes hangers as the necessary method of choice in those states which put women in the position of slaves to the State?
It is a shameful and terrifying day for America which is now becoming what Margaret Atwood wrote about in her dystopian 1980’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale.
Excerpted from The New York Times 9.1.2021
The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to block a Texas law prohibiting most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. The move, a response to an emergency application from abortion providers in the state, came less than a day after the law became effective, severely restricting access to the procedure.
In a separate dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan, was more direct.
“The court’s order is stunning,” she wrote. “Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.”
The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the court’s three liberal members in dissent.
The majority opinion was brief and unsigned, and it said the providers had not made out their case in the face of “complex and novel” procedural questions.
“In reaching this conclusion,” the opinion said, “we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants’ lawsuit. In particular, this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas’ law, and in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts.”
In dissent, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that he would have blocked the law while appeals moved forward.
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