Our legal DC guest columnist writes:
i read the Supreme Court's decision in the "partial birth abortion" ban case last night and about 2/3 of the way through, it made me angry and i had to stop. the court has entirely left behind the notion that these laws should have as their purpose, at least in part, the protection of women's health. as far as i can tell, there was nothing in the opinion about that notion except Kennedy's paternalistic statements that we shouldn't allow women to have such abortions because they might regret it some day. as usual, conservatives rail against "big brother" regulations until it's convenient to let big brother make the decisions. it's a complete change in direction for the court and, it seems, the beginning of the end of Roe v. Wade. another rather radical (i think) thing the court did was place Congress's "factual" findings - that really have nothing to do with fact - ahead of actual medical opinions. these "findings" were inserted into the law simply to try to bolster its chances of being upheld (a very similar law was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2000 as unconstitutional). this says to me that the Supreme Court is abdicating its responsibility - if it's going to say, from now on, that whatever Congress says goes, there's no point in having independent constitutional adjudicators.
we must start giving to planned parenthood and other reproductive rights organizations now - they have quite a lot of major fights ahead of them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/us/20assess.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.slate.com/id/2164512?nav=tap3
and here's the link to the actual opinion, if you want to read pages and pages of descriptions of these abortion procedures and not much legal analysis. ginsberg's dissent is worth a read, though.
http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/05-380_All.pdf
i read the Supreme Court's decision in the "partial birth abortion" ban case last night and about 2/3 of the way through, it made me angry and i had to stop. the court has entirely left behind the notion that these laws should have as their purpose, at least in part, the protection of women's health. as far as i can tell, there was nothing in the opinion about that notion except Kennedy's paternalistic statements that we shouldn't allow women to have such abortions because they might regret it some day. as usual, conservatives rail against "big brother" regulations until it's convenient to let big brother make the decisions. it's a complete change in direction for the court and, it seems, the beginning of the end of Roe v. Wade. another rather radical (i think) thing the court did was place Congress's "factual" findings - that really have nothing to do with fact - ahead of actual medical opinions. these "findings" were inserted into the law simply to try to bolster its chances of being upheld (a very similar law was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2000 as unconstitutional). this says to me that the Supreme Court is abdicating its responsibility - if it's going to say, from now on, that whatever Congress says goes, there's no point in having independent constitutional adjudicators.
we must start giving to planned parenthood and other reproductive rights organizations now - they have quite a lot of major fights ahead of them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/us/20assess.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.slate.com/id/2164512?nav=tap3
and here's the link to the actual opinion, if you want to read pages and pages of descriptions of these abortion procedures and not much legal analysis. ginsberg's dissent is worth a read, though.
http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/05-380_All.pdf
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