Photo courtesy of Financial Times
The Supreme Court on Friday overturned Roe v Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion for nearly a half century after it was established in 1973.
The court’s 6-3 ruling will allow state representatives to set their own abortion laws without interfering with Roe at the federal level, which legalized abortions during the first two trimesters of pregnancy. CNBC reported that more than half of the states are prepared to outlaw the practice based on the decision.
Meanwhile, other states plan to maintain liberal rules by giving women access to terminate pregnancies.
The conservative-leaning justices favored the ruling against the monumental practice after considering Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a restrictive Mississippi law that banned abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. As a result, Republican lawmakers in Mississippi called for the Supreme Court to end a lower court’s ruling in the procedure, per News Onyx.
Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion prompted Roe’s demise along with the 1992 Supreme Court decision that supported abortion rights in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey case. His criticism of the decision led three liberal justices to file a dissenting opinion against the ruling.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote.
“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Alito wrote.
“That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ and’ implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”
“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” Alito wrote.
The court’s liberal justices argued against their conservative colleagues that the contended decision “says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of.”
“A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs,” the dissent said.
″An abortion restriction, the majority holds, is permissible whenever rational, the lowest level of scrutiny known to the law. And because, as the Court has often stated, protecting fetal life is rational, States will feel free to enact all manner of restrictions.”
The decision came after Alito’s opinion was leaked in early May, with a majority ruling to overturn Roe. Activists on both sides of the debate expressed their views on how the ruling would affect the nation while questioning the integrity of the highest court in the land. The leak was used as leverage for Republicans to use as they prepare for midterm elections, with abortion as one of the critical topics to win over constituents in their respective states.
Now that Roe v. Wade is no longer a constitutional right, what does that mean for Black women and their access to health care?
Black women activists took to the streets of Washington, D.C., and held reproductive justice rallies to address the difficulties minority women face when accessing health care, KIRO 7 reported.
“Y’all are the wombs that risk. Y’all are the bodies they’re trying to eliminate,” said Loretta Ross, co-founder of the reproductive justice movement.
Kenda Sutton-El, the executive director of Birth in Color RVA in Richmond, Virginia, said those who are anti-abortion are more focused on the practice than on abortion clinics providing additional services to women in predominately Black communities.
“They’re so focused on abortion, but they’re all reproductive rights and reproductive health clinics,” said Sutton-El.
She said Black women are more than likely to face difficulties accessing health care services if abortion clinics are limited nationwide.
“People go there for pap smears, people go there for contraception, for birth control, they go there for checkups in general,” said Sutton-El. “We think about the clinics that are providing that care. We can’t just think of them as abortion clinics.”
According to CDC data, Black women are three times more likely to die due to complications during or after childbirth than white women.
Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder predicted the Supreme Courts’ decision to ban abortions would lead to a 33-percent increase in deaths among Black women.