{"id":846,"date":"2022-04-28T04:19:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-28T04:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=846"},"modified":"2025-09-29T04:18:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T04:18:15","slug":"wsj-editorial-abortion-and-the-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=846","title":{"rendered":"WSJ editorial: “Abortion and the Supreme Court”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fetus<\/a><\/p>\n

It's a long editorial and the link may not work if you don't have a subscription to the Journal. I've excerpted below the link why they think Roe v. Wade<\/em> and Casey v. Planned Parenthood<\/em> should be overturned. (The Casey referred to is the late Governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, who was prolife, not his son who is the current senator from Pennsylvania.)<\/p>\n

Abortion and the Supreme Court. This is the moment for the Justices to turn the issue over to the voters.<\/a><\/p>\n

Judging from the Dec. 1 oral argument in Dobbs<\/em>, the three liberal Justices would bar the Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks as a violation of Roe<\/em> and Casey<\/em>. Justices Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito are likely votes to sustain the law and overturn both precedents. Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett seemed, in their questioning, to side with the three conservatives.<\/p>\n

But Chief Justice John Roberts tried during the oral argument to find a middle way. He appeared to want to sustain the Mississippi law on grounds that it doesn\u2019t violate Casey<\/em>\u2019s test of whether there is an \u201cundue burden\u201d on the ability to obtain an abortion. If he pulls another Justice to his side, he could write the plurality opinion that controls in a 6-3 decision. If he can\u2019t, then Justice Thomas would assign the opinion and the vote could be 5-4. Our guess is that Justice Alito would then get the assignment.<\/p>\n

***********<\/p>\n

We hope he doesn\u2019t succeed\u2014for the good of the Court and the country. The Chief\u2019s middle ground might be explainable with some legal dexterity, but it would prolong the Court\u2019s abortion agony. Critics on the left would still lambaste the Court for letting Mississippi\u2019s law stand. And states would soon pass more laws with even narrower restrictions that would eventually force the Justices to overturn Roe <\/em>and Casey<\/em> or say the precedents stand on solid ground.<\/p>\n

Far better for the Court to leave the thicket of abortion regulation and return the issue to the states. A political uproar would ensue, but then voters would decide on abortion policy through elections\u2014starting in November.<\/p>\n

The ability to obtain an abortion would not disappear across the U.S. It might in some states, but in some of those states there are already relatively few clinics that perform abortions. The likeliest result is a multiplicity of laws depending on how the debate and elections go. California might allow abortion until the moment of birth. Mississippi might ban it except in cases of rape or incest.<\/p>\n

The Guttmacher Institute, which favors abortion rights, estimates that 26 states \u201care certain or likely to ban abortion without Roe<\/em>.\u201d But that means 24 states would allow it, including some of the most populous. Based on a Guttmacher analysis from 2017 on abortions performed in various states, the majority of those abortions would remain legal.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a movement is already underway to pay for women in restrictive states to travel and obtain abortions elsewhere. Planned Parenthood would have the biggest fund-raising years in its history. Abortion opponents might even be disappointed by the result of the political debate. They would have to make, and win, the moral case against abortion among their fellow citizens.<\/p>\n

This is how the American system is supposed to work, as the late Justice Antonin Scalia often wrote. After a series of elections, abortion law will sort itself out democratically. That had started to happen before the Supreme Court intervened in Roe<\/em>, embittering the abortion debate and damaging the Court.<\/p>\n

In Dobbs <\/em>the Court can say that such a profound moral question should be decided by the people, not by nine unelected judges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It's a long editorial and the link may not work if you don't have a subscription to the Journal. I've excerpted below the link why they think Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood should be overturned. (The Casey referred to is the late Governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, who was prolife, not his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7381,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions\/7381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}