Sunday marks 50th anniversary Roe v WadeThe fact that we’re marking an anniversary that’s never going to happen says everything that needs to be said about the weird and horrible legal world we currently inhabit – and the weird and terrible world.
roe It’s never perfect; it’s a floor rather than a ceiling when it comes to the complex world of reproductive justice. It’s always less.but roe, For its shaky three-month frame and its descendants, including casey, For all the subjective squeeze tests that ooze, at least a basement is created – a set of relatively certain guardrails where states, doctors and pregnant women can make judgments about their lives; where personal violence, painful illness, joy turns to sorrow or worse intimate moments.
roe Yes, limited protection is offered, but clarity is also promised. This is by design.Nixon appointee Justice Harry Blackmun wrote the original 7-2 ruling roewhen casey 1992 threatened its core principles.in his casey Opinion, Blackmun writes: “In the 19 years since Roe’s decision, the case has affected more than Family Planning—”[a]An entire generation has come of age free to adopt Roe’s concept of liberty to define women’s ability to act in society and make reproductive decisions. “
one of the most ridiculed lines in casey become Justice Kennedy mused indulgently that “liberty finds no sanctuary in questionable jurisprudence.” But in 2022, roe, Reversal of binding precedent, threat Decidethe quiet end lemon The testing, the abuse of shadow dockets, the flouting of the rules of ethics, and the crimes that are now unresolved by the High Court all make it clear that we are all acting and trying to order our day-to-day affairs within questionable jurisprudence. Maybe Justice Kennedy wasn’t just in high supply for himself.
Not being able to find the leaker is part of it story.
Not being able to find the leaker is a big part of the story. The betrayal was devastating for the justices, but they were involved in an investigation based on their own impeccable honor, which unfortunately remains a problem.Maybe the same Supreme Court claiming collapse over leaks wasn’t a coincidence Dobbs Opinion also signed off on an investigation that could only be directed to clerks or employees. Investigators display the same zeal for accountability that characterizes the current Supreme Court’s endless contempt for “moral” “rules,” and the same commitment to certainty and predictability that characterizes the current shape-shifting docket. The fiction of the nine justices being unsupervised is paramount — the justices were questioned in the leak investigation but deemed unnecessary to sign sworn affidavits — and the public is asked to believe they are not under suspicion. The leak of opinion that led to a state of national confusion around reproductive rights and bodily autonomy thus became the story of national confusion around court process, policy, and integrity. We are once again bound by the High Court’s uncertain rules. They are again free from any constraints.
That’s why it’s not an anniversary roe Seems like the perfect time to celebrate not held DobbsThe Dobbs majority sees the rule in the Dobbs case as simple: It cleanly returns the issue of abortion to the states it belongs to.But in fact, in about half of the states Dobbs Things have changed and there is now a system of fear and uncertainty about what is legal, what is criminal, what is the exception, and who decides (and who gets the bounty). Stories abound about doctors fearful of providing care, abortion providers reluctant to continue practicing, and pregnant women sometimes traveling from state to state seeking life-saving health care while bleeding or waiting for the onset of sepsis. This new jurisprudence of doubt will kill, injure and threaten lives.and the bottomless pit problem Dobbs—About interstate travel, about free speech and advocacy, about federal priorities? Who really knows? Wondering if your kids can drive their pregnant girlfriend from college to an out-of-state clinic? good luck. Trying to determine if a pharmacist can refuse to provide emergency contraception or methotrexate to treat a chronic condition? Who can tell?
It’s this uncertainty, this chaos and this pain that has pushed everything underground, away from the light, into the dark, that has put women’s health and safety in jeopardy over the past few decades roe.
It’s this uncertainty, this chaos and this pain that has pushed everything underground, away from the light, into the dark, that has put women’s health and safety in jeopardy over the past few decades roe. This powerlessness—the need to rely on whisper networks and health care providers, and the restraint of prosecutors—is the antithesis of liberty.So much so that it was ultimately deemed unacceptable roe. Now we’re back there trying to figure out whose rights still exist, and in which states, who’s going to be investigated and who’s going to be prosecuted. It is also a return to unfreedom.
Of course, it’s not just abortion that’s ultimately at stake. roe. As Dorothy Roberts continues to warn us, it is itself contraception, adoption, and even parenting. This is in vitro fertilization and surrogacy. As states survey abortion recipients and those who seek and provide information about pregnancy terminations, we will begin to understand the true limits of regulating and punishing motherhood. With states changing lanes on an almost weekly basis, the uncertainty goes beyond what’s now law, and could even become law soon. With the vast majority of judges showing us that they do not respect precedent, we can only wait to see what happens next, and we live every day in constant uncertainty about how things will continue to unfold. After Roe, the list of issues in the abstract starts with marriage equality and ends with who knows where. As Justice Breyer wrote in a 2019 dissent, “Today’s decision only casts doubt on which cases the Court will throw down next.” It is this ignorance that keeps us from being free.
For centuries, men have benefited from deterministic jurisprudence, while women and disadvantaged groups have struggled with questionable jurisprudence. We are told to trust our legislators to protect us. For centuries, women and disadvantaged groups have fought to upend this power imbalance: make the rules for you, and give rulemakers the power to be accountable to no one.
Perhaps ironically, it was never known who leaked Dobbs The opinion is that the court claims to be very concerned but not concerned with finding out. This is what “making the rules for you, not me” looks like.Perhaps someone who lives in a precarious legal system in which precedent, predictability, and order have disappeared and been replaced by undetermined outcomes should not feel entitled to a copy from the courts of who stole Accounting for a document in one unprecedented national betrayal as part of another unprecedented national betrayal Dobbs. No Jubilee, No Investigation, Widening Uncertainty of National Jurisprudence – Here Are the New Rules law.
