When it comes to domestic policy, the Bush administration may have repeatedly disappointed the far-right base through passivity and inaction, but the president did deliver on one key promise: he shifted the Supreme Court to the right with two very conservative new justices.
The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.
The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.
The opponents of the act “have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.
Though most of you can probably guess the five in the majority, just to be clear, they were Justices Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg slammed the Court majority in a scathing dissent, writing that “the Court’s opinion tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a woman’s health.”
This is a truly awful ruling.
Keep the history in mind. In 2000, the Court considered a similar law and struck it down as unconstitutional. Writing for a 5-4 majority at that time, Justice Breyer said the law imposed an undue burden on a woman’s right to make an abortion decision.
In response, the Republican Congress and the Bush White House passed a new law in 2003, which was struck down by six different federal courts, all of which were unanimous in their agreement that the law was unconstitutional.
As a result, today’s ruling overturns recently-established Supreme Court precedent, the judgment of every federal court that considered the law, and the medical judgment of OB/GYN professionals.
The consequences could be devastating for women with troubled pregnancies, many of whom have relied on the D&E procedure to save their lives. As Nico noted, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposed the law, explaining, “The intact variant of D&E offers significant safety advantages over the non-intact method, including a reduced risk of catastrophic hemorrhage and life-threatening infection. These safety advantages are widely recognized by experts in the field of women’s health, authoritative medical texts, peer-reviewed studies, and the nation’s leading medical schools.”
Instead, for the first time, the Supreme Court has interfered with — and banned — a specific medical procedure that saves women’s lives, backing a law that includes no protection for the health of pregnant women.
As for the big picture, publius explained quite well the point I’d hoped to make.
This case was not decided today. It was decided on November 2, 2004. Don’t blame the Court, blame the American people. They voted in a Republican President and the entirely-predictable consequence was increasing restrictions on abortions. In fact, Bush is one Justice Stevens illness away from overturning Roe entirely.
And for what it’s worth, if any of the current Republican candidates win, Roe is over for at least a generation. Maybe you think that’s good, maybe you don’t. That’s not the point. The point is that voting for Republicans has consequences and this is one of them. And these things are worth thinking about when you base your vote on things like John Kerry’s windsurfing, or Bush’s probably-fun-to-drink-with-ness.
Today is a setback for civil liberties, women’s rights, and public health. It’s as simple as that.