NEWS PROVIDED BY
Judicial Watch
June 24, 2022
 
WASHINGTON, June 24, 2022 /Standard Newswire/ -- Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement regarding the  Supreme Court's opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson that overturned Roe v. Wade:

This is a day to celebrate life! Five Supreme Court justices today stood strong in support of the Constitution by overturning Roe. Now states can again extend the protection of law to the precious lives of unborn human beings. Americans will mourn the tens of millions human beings lost to abortion on demand under the Roe regime. But Americans will soon rejoice for the millions who will live thanks to Roe being thrown into the dustbin of history.

Justice Alito's opinion is one for the ages and simply holds: "It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives" and "procuring an abortion is not a fundamental constitutional right because such a right has no basis in the Constitution's text or in our Nation's history." The decision affirmed Roe was egregiously wrong and was an abusive exercise of "raw judicial power." Today's decision begins to undo Roe's damage to our nation.

Simply put, abortion ends a human life and is incompatible with a civil, moral society. The lives of unborn human beings must be protected in every state. States should immediately act to protect the lives of unborn human beings. And Congress should also move to protect unborn lives at the federal level. For example, Congress should move to stop, in the least, federal funding for the trafficking of fetal organs harvested from human beings killed by abortion.

The heroic decision comes down shortly after Justice Kavanaugh was almost assassinated as a foreseeable result of this president's and his leftist allies' despicable intimidation campaign against the Supreme Court to protect the abortion on demand regime imposed by the Roe court. The criminal leak, illegal protests, and threats didn't work: Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett held firm for the rule of law and will go down in history for their bravery.

Americans can expect an escalation of the terror campaign by pro-abortionists against the Justices, pro-life centers that help pregnant mothers, and Catholic and other Christian churches that support the right to life. Rather than allowing illegal protests at the homes of Supreme Court Justices and paying little attention to the terror campaign to date, the Biden Justice Department must act to address this crisis now. And state and local law enforcement should also focus on the escalating threats on pregnancy centers, pro-life advocates, and churches.

Judicial Watch filed an amicus curiae brief with the Supreme Court in the Dobbs case in support of the constitutionality of Mississippi's Gestational Age Act and overturning Roe v. Wade. The brief argued that the Constitution and Bill of Rights exist to protect the federalist system and sovereignty of the states on these matters:

Our Founding Fathers very carefully crafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights to protect the individual sovereignty of the states. The resulting principles of federalism purposefully guided the jurisprudence of this country for more than 150 years, maintaining fairly clear spheres of federal and state power....

Abortion policy began in the states where the people used the democratic process to voice their moral, religious, and scientific opinions. Roe needlessly wrenched abortion policy from the states and, relying on "penumbras formed by emanations," seven unelected judges created a brand-new constitutional right to abortion. The response was immediate and lasting and after 48 years, strong opposition to Roe and its progeny remain.

Despite creative judicial legislating, it is crystal clear that abortion does not involve war, peace, negotiation, foreign commerce, or taxation. Abortion fits squarely into the states' sphere of objects that concern the "lives, liberties, and properties of the people." Not being an enumerated power, the Roe Court did not have the authority to overturn the abortion laws of the states.

In deciding Roe as it did, the court created a legal morass for decades to come. The Judicial Watch brief addresses this fact as another reason for overturning Roe:

Far from creating a national consensus, Roe threw the states into a 48-year contentious legal battle. Even some abortion advocates eschew the injudicious method of federalizing abortion as short-circuiting a naturally evolving jurisprudence under state laws. As federal and state judges attempt to apply this Court’s precedents, a national landscape of inconsistent, inconclusive, and untenable rules have emerged. As a national policy, abortion jurisprudence is, in a word, a mess. Stubbornly holding on to unconstitutional precedent will never have a positive outcome. It is time to return abortion policy to the states where it belongs and where the democratic process can effectively work.

Finally, this court completes what its predecessors failed to do in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 874-75 (1992) only 20 years after Roe, fully cast aside that decision. In Casey, the court rejected many of the tenets of Roe, but it failed to take the final step and overturn it. This decision in Dobbs remedies that failure as addressed in the Judicial Watch brief:

Less than 20 years after Roe, this Court essentially rejected Roe without overturning Roe and set up a new standard which permitted states to restrict abortion within their borders barring an "undue burden" on women. Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 874-75 (1992), another splintered opinion and holding, recognized the states' interest in protecting prenatal life after viability but fell short of recognizing the preeminence of state power.

SOURCE Judicial Watch

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