1/ In a historic reversal, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion after 49 years. The 6-to-3 decision to uphold a Mississippi abortion ban follows the leak of a draft opinion in May indicating that the court was poised to overturn Roe, which first declared a constitutional right to abortion, as well as Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which re-affirmed that right in 1992. The ruling leaves states free to restrict or ban abortions. At least 26 states â where roughly 33 million women of child-bearing age live â are expected to ban or restrict abortions, including battleground states like Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which have pre-Roe bans on abortion on the books. Georgia has a six-week ban in place. More than a quarter of the countryâs 790 abortion clinics are estimated to close, and women in those states will have to travel an average of 552 miles to access the medical procedure. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that the 1973 decision âwas egregiously wrong from the startâ and âmust be overruledâ because the arguments were âexceptionally weak,â âhad damaging consequences,â and âenflamed debate and deepened divisionâ Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett joined the majority opinion. Chief Justice John Roberts didnât join the majority opinion, but instead wrote that there was no need to overturn Roe to rule in Mississippiâs favor. In dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan wrote that the court had done damage to womenâs equality and that the decision means âyoung women today will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers,â because the courtâs opinion means that âfrom 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.â They concluded: âWith sorrow â for this court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection â we dissent.â Biden, meanwhile, called the decision a âtragic errorâ and urged voters to elect members of Congress willing to write abortion protections into law. Speaking from the White House, Biden said: âThis is a sad day for the country in my view, but it doesnât mean the fight is over.â (New York Times / NPR / Washington Post / NBC News / Politico / USA Today / Wall Street Journal / Associated Press / SCOTUSblog / Bloomberg)
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2022/06/24/day-521/