Tag: a woman’s right to choose at risk

Mississippi’s attorney general asks Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade

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Mississippi’s attorney general urged the Supreme Court in a Thursday brief to overrule Roe v. Wade next term when the justices review Mississippi’s ban on virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Calling the court’s precedent on abortion “egregiously wrong,” Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R) explicitly set the dispute over Mississippi’s restrictive law on a collision course with the landmark 1973 decision in Roe that first articulated the constitutional right to abortion.

“This Court should overrule Roe and Casey,” Fitch wrote, referring also to the court’s 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. “Roe and Casey are egregiously wrong. They have proven hopelessly unworkable. … And nothing but a full break from those cases can stem the harms they have caused.” Continue reading.

Supreme Court takes case that could diminish Roe v. Wade

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The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to take up a dispute over a Mississippi law that bans virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, potentially setting the 6-3 conservative majority court on a collision course with the landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.

The move was announced in an unsigned order, with the justices indicating the dispute would be limited to the major issue of the constitutionality of pre-viability restrictions on elective abortions. 

The case was brought on appeal by Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R) after a federal appeals court sided with challengers to the state’s restriction.  Continue reading.

Gorsuch questions law at the legal root of abortions in concurrence blocking limit on religious gatherings

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On the night before Thanksgiving, as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) COVID-19 executive orders to prohibit large church gatherings amid the pandemic, Justice Neil Gorsuch weighed in with a conservative stance condemning a number of key laws that do not align with his beliefs. 

According to Law and Crime, Gorsuch’s choice of words centered on a column of constitutional law — a passage highlighting “implied right to ‘bodily integrity.” Gorsuch opted to draw a major distinction between “rights explicitly granted by the Constitution (e.g., the First Amendment rights to speech and religion) and rights presumably read between the lines of the Constitution’s text,” per the publication.

Here is an excerpt of the statements in which Gorsuch referred to Jacobson v. Massachusetts to explain his logic: Continue reading.