6.27.2016

Women Left Unprotected by SCOTUS Decision

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled 5-3 against the protection of women undergoing abortions, striking down health and safety protections put in place on Texas clinics for women undergoing abortion, stating those protections were an “undue burden” on a woman’s access to abortion as set forth in Planned Parenthood v. Casey which imposed the undue burden standard which was a pinnacle for abortion rights as well as abortion restrictions.  Learn more at The Rise and Fall of Women's Rights). 

While Casey, and not Roe v. Wade, is the current law on abortion, Roe's Effects on Family Law have nonetheless worked destruction on the American family.  The Texas case—Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt—was particularly important in that it was an opportunity for the Court to protect women from harm in surgical malpractice and Gosnell-like brutality in abortion clinics where women were not adequately cared for in abortion after-care, causing the death of some women undergoing abortions. 

Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the Justice Stephen Breyer majority opinion. Dissenting were Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.  In dissent, Justice Thomas wrote, “Today the Court strikes down two state statutory provisions in all of their applications, at the behest of abortion clinics and doctors. That decision exemplifies the Court’s troubling tendency ‘to bend the rules when any effort to limit abortion, or even to speak in opposition to abortion, is at issue.’” 

It is indeed a “troubling tendency” when the High Court does not see the protection of women as paramount in any abortion procedure, and does not see the pro-life position of young women who demand that protection as important to the debate.  Today the High Court has left women unprotected in the abortion procedure.

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