The Supreme Court’s recent decision to kick the matter of abortion rights back to state legislators drew cheers from pro-life groups.
“Today the Supreme Court, in line with modern science and overwhelming public consensus, recognized the truth in every mother’s heart and that pro-life advocates have argued all along: unborn children are human beings, deserving of protection,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA), said in a release.
At issue in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was the question of whether the federal government can decide abortion limitations, or whether that power belongs in the hands of state representatives, who are more in tune with their constituents. North Carolina already had adjusted its law, though the change is slight.
“Every legislature in the land, in every single state and Congress, is now free to allow the will of the people to make its way into the law through our elected representatives,” Dannenfelser said in the release.
The Supreme Court announced its ruling Friday. The case was examining the constitutionality of a Mississippi law which banned most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The court upheld the law by a 6-3 vote. In a 5-4 vote, the court also overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey and ruled that the Constitution did not protect access to abortion.
The landmark decision overruled nearly 50 years of precedent on abortion law, with the lead majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito. Chief Justice John voted to uphold the Mississippi law without overruling Roe. Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor wrote a joint dissent. According to SCOTUSblog, Alito’s opinion found that Roe had been “egregiously wrong and deeply damaging”. He noted that the Constitution never mentioned abortion and examined nearly 200 years of American law showing that States had been seriously restricting abortion for decades well before Roe v. Wade in 1973.
The National Right to Life Committee, like SBA, tweeted its support for the decision, calling it a correction of “the most egregious and deadly Judicial ruling,” referring to Roe v. Wade.
In the days since the ruling, some states have made changes to prevailing law. North Carolina now bans most abortions after 20 weeks, according to a report by CNET. Before the Dobbs ruling, abortions were permitted in North Carolina up to the time the fetus was 22 weeks along. Gov. Roy Cooper has recently vetoed several other bills aimed at restricting abortion.
