The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the court’s landmark ruling that brought about the constitutional right to abortion. Earlier in 1973, the Court had granted the right to abortion in the first two trimesters of pregnancy.
The Court’s decision on Friday gives individual courts to set their own abortion laws, irrespective of the earlier Roe judgment. Almost half of the states are expected to act according to the apex court’s judgment which will result in havoc in the lives of the citizens as it will force them to travel across borders to seek reproductive help.
Other states are planning to take up a different approach to pregnancy termination laws, and grant liberty in the respective matter.
Abortion opponents applauded a victory they had long hoped for and worked to secure, while proponents of abortion rights instantly denounced the decision. On Friday, protesters flocked to the Supreme Court to voice their opposition to a ruling that will overturn decades of American precedent.
The decision for the same was decided by a 6-3 majority, and was written by Justice Samuel Alito’. Apart from Alito, 5 other High Court judges were involved in the decision making, including Chief Justice John Roberts whose stance on abortion laws and his will to overturn Roe had long been a matter of debate. The other three justices in the majority side included: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
The three liberal judges wrote a dissenting statement on Roe v. Wade, which immediately invited protesters to the Supreme Court on Friday. The following decision was made immediately a day after another controversial judgment upheld in the U.S. on the gun laws which now makes it very difficult for people to obtain a license to carry guns outside their homes.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote.
“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Alito wrote.
“That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ and ’implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” he added.
“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” Alito wrote.
The liberal justices of the court made it clear in their united dissent that the majority overruled Roe and Casey for only one reason: because it has always detested them and now has the votes to discard them.
The protests have mostly swelled in Washington D.C., in city centres, towns and parks, after the court had upheld the decision. Later on Friday, the Police resorted to the use of tear gas to disperse a crowd of abortion rights supporters who had gathered in protest, outside the State Capitol in Phoenix. The protests were mostly followed because the reproductive services in matters of abortion have currently been brought to a halt, because of lack of clarity on the subject on legal grounds.
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