After 50 long years, the Supreme Court finally struck down on Friday the cases that created a right to the legalized, intentional killing of unborn children and prevented the states from restricting the procedure.
Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh ruled that Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey were unsound decisions that improperly conferred a right to obtain an abortion in a 6-3 decision, with Chief Justice John Roberts concurring. Nowhere in the Constitution, and nowhere in our nation’s history and tradition, is there such a thing as a right to terminate a pregnancy at any stage, the justices argued.
The majority opinion, written by Alito, states:
<bsp-quote data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1656081667329,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"0000016b-0662-db24-a17f-4e6771eb0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1656081667329,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"0000016b-0662-db24-a17f-4e6771eb0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"quote":"Guided by the history and tradition that map the essential components of the Nation’s concept of ordered liberty, the Court finds the Fourteenth Amendment clearly does not protect the right to an abortion. Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right. Until a few years before Roe, no federal or state court had recognized such a right. Nor had any scholarly treatise. Indeed, abortion had long been a crime in every single State.
At common law, abortion was criminal in at least some stages of pregnancy and was regarded as unlawful and could have very serious consequences at all stages. American law followed the common law until a wave of statutory restrictions in the 1800s expanded criminal liability for abortions. By the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, three-quarters of the States had made abortion a crime at any stage of pregnancy. This consensus endured until the day Roe was decided. Roe either ignored or misstated this history, and Casey declined to reconsider Roe’s faulty historical analysis.","_id":"00000181-9628-df44-ad8b-d76ac9400000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b92f10002"}”>Guided by the history and tradition that map the essential components of the Nation’s concept of ordered liberty, the Court finds the Fourteenth Amendment clearly does not protect the right to an abortion. Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right. Until a few years before Roe, no federal or state court had recognized such a right. Nor had any scholarly treatise. Indeed, abortion had long been a crime in every single State.
At common law, abortion was criminal in at least some stages of pregnancy and was regarded as unlawful and could have very serious consequences at all stages. American law followed the common law until a wave of statutory restrictions in the 1800s expanded criminal liability for abortions. By the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, three-quarters of the States had made abortion a crime at any stage of pregnancy. This consensus endured until the day Roe was decided. Roe either ignored or misstated this history, and Casey declined to reconsider Roe’s faulty historical analysis.Rather than dealing with these facts, Roe and Casey advocates, including the justices who were responsible for them, decided that the right to abortion must fall under a broad and vague “right to privacy,” or the freedom to make “intimate and personal choices,” Alito wrote, which has shifted and been redefined countless times over the past several decades, as Justice Clarence Thomas noted in his concurring opinion. True freedom, however, “sets limits and defines the boundary between competing interests,” Alito said, and the fact is that there are just as many people in the U.S. who would like to see abortion restricted as there are those who would not. They deserve just as much of a say in the process.
The court also argues that stare decisis on its own is not enough to justify upholding Roe and Casey, especially since those cases are based on an improper interpretation of the Constitution that has radically distorted our political system. “Stare decisis is not an inexorable command, and ‘is at its weakest when [the court] interpret[s] the Constitution,’” Alito wrote. “Some of the Court’s most important constitutional decisions have overruled prior precedents,” such as Brown v. Board of Education, which overruled Plessy v. Ferguson.
The decision is a marvel and triumph for the pro-life movement, which has labored tirelessly for the past 50 years to bring us to this point. It is the culmination of our legal, political, and cultural efforts to eradicate abortion nationally and the reasons women seek it out in the first place. Now, the next phase of the fight for life will begin.
Alito concludes: “We end this opinion where we began. Abortion presents a profound moral question. 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.”
Praise God.
