Alito court overturns Roe v. Wade, allowing states to criminalize reproductive rights

An extrem­ist, far-right wing bloc on the Unit­ed States Supreme Court today over­turned one of the most impor­tant legal hold­ings in U.S. his­to­ry, decree­ing that Amer­i­cans lack the free­dom to make their own repro­duc­tive health­care deci­sions and that states can crim­i­nal­ize abor­tion care.

Authored by Samuel Ali­to, the major­i­ty opin­ion over­turn­ing Roe and Planned Par­ent­hood v. Casey was joined by Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gor­such, and Amy Coney Bar­rett, Don­ald Trump’s appointees. Clarence Thomas and John Roberts filed con­cur­ring opin­ions, with Thomas mak­ing it clear he’d like to see oth­er prece­dents, like Oberge­fell, over­turned next. Sonia Sotomay­or, Stephen Brey­er, and Ele­na Kagan (the remain­ing lib­er­al jus­tices) all dissented.

A draft opin­ion also authored by Ali­to leaked out of the Supreme Court sev­er­al weeks ago and was pub­lished by Politi­co, fore­shad­ow­ing today’s decision. 

“The Con­sti­tu­tion does not pro­hib­it the cit­i­zens of each State from reg­u­lat­ing or pro­hibiting abor­tion,” Ali­to asserts in the con­clud­ing pas­sage of his opin­ion’s syl­labus. “Roe and Casey arro­gat­ed that author­i­ty. The Court over­rules those deci­sions and returns that author­i­ty to the peo­ple and their elect­ed representatives.”

“The major­i­ty tries to hide the geo­graph­i­cal­ly expan­sive effects of its hold­ing,” Sotomay­or, Brey­er, and Kagan said in reply.

“Today’s deci­sion, the major­i­ty says, per­mits ‘each State’ to address abor­tion as it pleas­es. That is cold com­fort, of course, for the poor woman who can­not get the mon­ey to fly to a dis­tant State for a pro­ce­dure. Above all oth­ers, women lack­ing finan­cial resources will suf­fer from today’s decision.”

“In any event, inter­state restric­tions will also soon be in the off­ing. After this deci­sion, some States may block women from trav­el­ing out of State to obtain abor­tions, or even from receiv­ing abor­tion med­ica­tions from out of State.”

“Some may crim­i­nal­ize efforts, includ­ing the pro­vi­sion of infor­ma­tion or fund­ing, to help women gain access to oth­er States’ abor­tion services.”

“Most threat­en­ing of all, no lan­guage in today’s deci­sion stops the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment from pro­hibit­ing abor­tions nation­wide, once again from the moment of con­cep­tion and with­out excep­tions for rape or incest. If that hap­pens, ‘the views of [an indi­vid­ual State’s] cit­i­zens’ will not matter.”

“It’s a sad day for the court and the coun­try,” Pres­i­dent Joe Biden said in remarks at the White House after the deci­sion was released on the Supreme Court’s web­site. “I believe Roe v. Wade was the cor­rect deci­sion as a mat­ter of con­sti­tu­tion­al law and appli­ca­tion of a fun­da­men­tal right to pri­va­cy and lib­er­ty in mat­ters of fam­i­ly and per­son­al autonomy.”

But after near­ly fifty years, Roe is gone. It’s the first time in at least the mod­ern his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States that a major right pre­vi­ous­ly rec­og­nized and pro­tect­ed by the Court has been tak­en away. And the Court’s right wing bloc clear­ly intends to go much fur­ther and over­turn more prece­dents in the months and years to come. Clarence Thomas is gid­dy: he can hard­ly wait.

“Today’s Supreme Court deci­sion is the cul­mi­na­tion of a coor­di­nat­ed Repub­li­can effort to roll back repro­duc­tive rights,” said Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers in a joint state­ment, includ­ing DNC Chair Jaime Harrison.

“The 2022 elec­tion will now deter­mine whether new, cru­el, and pun­ish­ing restric­tions will be imposed on women and families.”

“With Repub­li­cans in pow­er, states could make abor­tion ille­gal with­out excep­tions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.”

“Women and doc­tors could be charged crim­i­nal­ly. Oth­er pre­vi­ous­ly set­tled rights, like the right to con­tra­cep­tion and mar­riage equal­i­ty, could be threatened.”

“The Amer­i­can peo­ple don’t want any of this.”

Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi echoed those sen­ti­ments, declar­ing: “This cru­el rul­ing is out­ra­geous and heart-wrench­ing. But make no mis­take: the rights of women and all Amer­i­cans are on the bal­lot this November.”

“This is a sad and trag­ic day in Amer­i­ca,” said Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell.

“Mil­lions of Amer­i­cans are los­ing their rights to con­trol their own bod­ies and their own health­care. Despite decades of Repub­li­can Supreme Court nom­i­nees com­ing before the Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee and say­ing that they believe Roe v. Wade is set­tled law, they have tak­en a sledge­ham­mer to the right to privacy.”

“Today, Repub­li­cans dragged this coun­try back­wards by half a cen­tu­ry,” said Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray. “Repub­li­cans ripped away our rights and made this gen­er­a­tion the first gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can women with few­er rights than their moth­ers. Repub­li­cans are forc­ing women to stay preg­nant and give birth when they don’t want to — no mat­ter the cir­cum­stances. Repub­li­cans are even pass­ing laws to jail women who get abor­tions and the doc­tors who pro­vide them.”

“And right here in the Sen­ate, it was Repub­li­cans who stacked our Supreme Court with anti-abor­tion jus­tices, who blocked Democ­rats’ efforts to pro­tect abor­tion rights, and who right now are push­ing for a fed­er­al abor­tion ban.”

“We knew this deci­sion was com­ing, but that does­n’t make it any less hor­ri­fy­ing,” said Sen­a­tor Ron Wyden.

“The Court has betrayed and defied the Amer­i­can peo­ple, who are right­ful­ly ter­ri­fied that the most pow­er­ful peo­ple in the coun­try are clear­ly eager to vio­late their pri­va­cy and the basic human right to con­trol their own bodies.”

“When you have to make the most inti­mate, per­son­al deci­sions that will impact your life and your health and body, I don’t know any­one who wants some politi­cian in the room,” said Sen­a­tor Jeff Merkley.

“Yet, that is exact­ly the impact of this Supreme Court opin­ion for mil­lions and mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, who sud­den­ly find an over­bear­ing gov­ern­ment dic­tat­ing their path. This assault on Amer­i­cans’ rights and free­dom is shocking.”

“After today, we will see the very real and dan­ger­ous con­se­quences across the coun­try of tak­ing away the right to safe and legal abor­tions. It’s on all of us – Mem­bers of Con­gress, med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, advo­cates, and vot­ers – to stand up against this night­mare vision of peo­ple forced to car­ry preg­nan­cies to term against their will.  Each one of us should have the free­dom to live our lives with­out politi­cians forc­ing their way into our bed­rooms and exam rooms.”

Abor­tion remains legal in Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon… for now.

Ida­ho, mean­while, already has a law in place set to go into effect crim­i­nal­iz­ing the exer­cise of repro­duc­tive rights. Ida­hoans will need to trav­el to Wash­ing­ton or Ore­gon in the months and years to come obtain abor­tion care through a clinic.

As not­ed by Speak­er Pelosi, Sen­a­tor Mur­ray, and oth­ers in their state­ments today, Repub­li­cans like Mike Pence are open­ly push­ing for a nation­wide ban on abor­tion and will not be con­tent with the Supreme Court’s action today.

This isn’t about allow­ing states to make their own laws. It’s the first step in cre­at­ing a dystopi­an future where nobody has the right to make their own repro­duc­tive deci­sions. It is no exag­ger­a­tion to say that extrem­ist Repub­li­cans want con­trol over the uterus of every Amer­i­can capa­ble of bear­ing a child. They’ll keep push­ing for­ward until they get what they want… unless they’re stopped.

We at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute are com­mit­ted to stop­ping that hor­rif­ic future and revers­ing the harm­ful actions of the Ali­to court. We agree with George Lakoff and oth­er thinkers that free­dom does­n’t stand still. If we do not expand free­dom, it will be con­tract­ed by rad­i­cal right wingers, as we saw today.

It is up to us — all of us — who believe in the right to pri­va­cy, the right to bod­i­ly auton­o­my, and the right to freely choose when and whether to repro­duce to work togeth­er to estab­lish explic­it con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions for these rights. That won’t be achiev­able overnight, but it’s a long term goal we must com­mit our­selves to. And in the short term, we must expand the Supreme Court to end the dark era to right wing judi­cial activism that is threat­en­ing the future of our country.