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Re: Supreme Court upholds Partial Birth Abortion Ban
Justice Ginsburg read a summary of her dissent from the bench when the decision was handed down. This little piece gives a capsule view of that summary.
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In an alarming decision, the Court today reverses the judgments other federal courts have uniformly made. Today's decision refuses to take Casey and Stenberg seriously. The Court's opinion tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a woman's health.
The Court asserts that its ruling furthers the Government's interest in “promoting fetal life.” But the Act scarcely furthers that interest, for it targets only a method of abortion. The woman may abort the fetus, so long as her doctor uses another method, one her doctor judges less safe for her. The Court further pretends that its decision protects women. Women might come to regret their physician-counseled choice of an intact D&E and suffer from “[s]evere depression and loss of esteem,” the Court worries. Notably, the solution the Court approves is not to require doctors to inform women adequately of the different procedures they might choose, and the risks each entails. Instead, the Court shields women by denying them any choice in the matter. This way of protecting women recalls ancient notions about women's place in society and under the Constitution — ideas that have long since been discredited.
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Here is a transcript of the entire summary
The decision also contains an interesting warning from the furthest reaches of the right wing. Justices Thomas and Scalia wrote a concurring opinon which stated their belief that
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the Court's abortion jurisprudence...has no basis in the Constitution.
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Justices Alito and Roberts did not join that concurrence but I personally believe they would not have been appointed if they did not feel the same way.
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A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon
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