On Monday, Supreme Court announced that it has stopped anti-abortion momentum, for now, delivering a stinging and surprising setback for anti-abortion activists.
A Louisiana case, over a 2014 law, which required doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at hospitals, was never envisioned as a way to upend Roe v. Wade, according to the NY Times.
The Monday decision, the first major abortion case since President Donald Trump shifted the court’s balance of power to the right, showed that Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh sided with the anti-abortion cause, as hoped by activists.
Legal challenges to abortion have taken years to reach the Supreme Court but states continued to add to the list, passing dozens of new laws. Earlier in June, Tennessee passed a bill that would outlaw abortions in as little as six weeks of pregnancy without exceptions for rape or incest.
President of the Susan B. Anthony List Marjorie Dannenfelser called the ruling a “bitter disappointment.” Susan B. Anthony List is a non-profit organization that seeks to reduce and ultimately end abortion in the U.S. by supporting anti-abortion activists.
She said, “It is imperative that we re-elect President Trump and our pro-life majority in the U.S. Senate so we can further restore the judiciary, most especially the Supreme Court. President Trump, assisted by the pro-life Senate majority, is keeping his promise to appoint constitutionalist Supreme Court justices and other federal judges.”
Director of Hope Medical Group of Women Kathaleen Pittman said, “It’s crazy times, and it’s a wonderful good thing,” describing the mood after the ruling as “absolute giddiness.”
In the United States, the anti-abortion movement has made tremendous gains in state legislatures, allowing them to pass a flurry of bans in recent years.
The White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany called the ruling “unfortunate.”
She said, “Instead of valuing fundamental democratic principles, unelected justices have intruded on the sovereign prerogatives of state governments by imposing their own policy preference in favor of abortion to override legitimate abortion safety regulations.” President of NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion-rights group, Ilyse Hogue tweeted, “This is great news, but the battle continues, folks. As long as Kavanaugh is on the bench, our rights are on the line—and we need your help to flip the Senate.”
