If you thought the new Texas abortion law set a dangerous precedent for the Lonestar state, just wait until it starts expanding to other states and soon becomes the law of most of the land.
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Last week, the US Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to uphold a new Texas abortion law that will prevent women in the state from obtaining an abortion for incest, rape, or any reason after only 6 weeks of pregnancy. Since most women are unaware they’re even pregnant prior to 6 weeks, the law will effectively railroad the US standard of Roe v. Wade and make abortions in Texas an unobtainable procedure of the past.
In a stunning battle between a predominately conservative Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts ditched his conservative colleagues and voted along with Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor in opposing the Texas abortion law. However, thanks to Donald Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett (who joined forces with Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito), they were able to push the law through and put an immediate halt to abortion in Texas.
“The court’s order is stunning,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent. “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.”
Chief Justice Roberts wrote that he would have preferred to block the law while appeals moved forward.
“The statutory scheme before the court is not only unusual but unprecedented,” Roberts wrote. “The legislature has imposed a prohibition on abortions after roughly six weeks, and then essentially delegated enforcement of that prohibition to the populace at large. The desired consequence appears to be to insulate the state from responsibility for implementing and enforcing the regulatory regime.”
Justice Elena Kagan criticized the court’s practice of deciding important issues in rushed decisions without full briefing or oral argument — or what Supreme Court specialists have called a “shadow docket.”
“Today’s ruling illustrates just how far the court’s ‘shadow docket’ decisions may depart from the usual principles of appellate process,” she wrote. “That ruling, as everyone must agree, is of great consequence.”
So, what does the Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold the controversial Texas abortion law mean for the rest of America?
Since Texas was successful in skirting the current US law which allows legal abortions, watch for other conservative states to seize the moment and use Texas as legal precedent to skirt the law in their state, too. Or, in other words, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, Kansas, South Carolina, Nebraska, Kentucky, and other conservative strongholds could soon make abortion illegal within their borders for ANY reason. That would not only end a woman’s right to make decisions about her own health and her own body, but it would prompt women to cross state lines or return to the days of “dark alley” procedures in order to end a pregnancy.
And, if that happens, welcome to the DIVIDED States of America!
CNN:
The Supreme Court’s dramatic 5-4 action leaving a Texas abortion ban in place at midnight Wednesday establishes that the Roberts Court no longer is Roberts’ Court.
Chief Justice John Roberts dissented with three liberal justices in what could be regarded as the least considered but most consequential case in years.
Since Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court last October and he lost his position at the ideological center of the bench, Roberts has been on the dissenting side in a handful of close cases. But the Texas abortion controversy arguably marked his most significant loss to date.