On Tuesday, the political world felt shockwaves when a leaked document indicated that the Supreme Court has moved to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. News outlet Politico obtained a copy from an insider of the Court; the identity of the leaker has not been discovered. Chief Justice Roberts confirmed the validity of the leak and pledged an internal investigation to the breach of security, as well as reaffirming that public opinion will not sway the Court's decision. Justice Alito penned the opinion; C.J. Roberts did not vote, but the other four conservative-leaning Justices likely ruled in favor, thus making the decision 5-3. The Court revisits the landmark decisions of Roe v. Wade, a case that prohibited laws that regulated abortion for the first trimester of pregnancy, and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, a case where the plurality opinion prohibited laws that would cause an "undue burden" that would prohibit a women's abortion. The Court held that "Roe and Casey must be overturned." The decision opens with a scathing review of Roe, criticizing its historical analysis. J. Alito claims that because there is has never been a historical basis for abortion, it would be hard to claim that the Ninth Amendment applies here. Historically, these cases often relate to other social cases such as the right to marriage (Loving v. Virginia), the right to medical privacy (Griswold v. Connecticut), the right to private consensual activity (Lawrence v. Texas) and so forth. But Alito argues that Roe is different because of the ambiguity of defining "life." He stresses this point by claiming that "our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion." Both Roe and Casey declare that abortion destroys "potential life."
Alito's decision shifts to suggest that the Court does not have the jurisdiction to impose such power, so the ability to regulate abortion must be returned to the state's elected representatives. Alito then draws comparisons on how the Court made wrong decisions in the past, referring to decisions such as Plessy v. Ferguson. The decision ends with Alito's criticizing Roe's "exceedingly weak" constitutional reasoning. He argues that the ambiguity of viability cannot be uniformly agreed upon by federal law (hence why different states at the time passed laws that restricted abortion up to different periods in a woman's pregnancy), and the ambiguity of Casey's "undue burden" cannot justify invoking the powers of the SCOTUS to uniformly decide. The decision concludes that the power to regulate abortion is returned to the states, and those states may pursue their interest of protecting life "at all stages of development." Alito further justified this decision saying that women, whom he noted to have a higher voter turnout than men, would be able to press their state for legislative changes. He subtly hinted at the idea of lawmakers' attacking women by stating "are we to believe that the hundreds of lawmakers whose votes were needed to enact these laws were motivated by hostility to Catholics and women?" during his covering the history of abortion laws. The concise rule of law is that abortion will now be a state-regulated issue at all stages
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