WASHINGTON — Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer spoke here Wednesday night to an audience — all clutching autographed copies of his newly published book — and could scarcely avoid a little bit of I told you so.
The 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision that gave states the responsibility of deciding abortion access within their borders was supposed to put the issue in the rearview mirror after a half-century of divisive fighting.
The Dobbs majority’s hope that legislatures and not courts will decide the abortion question will not be realized. After all, different states will enact different laws and enforce them differently, said Breyer, who was among the dissenters in the 6-3 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The day before, thousands of protesters squared off on the Supreme Court steps, separated by hundreds of officers, while the justices heard arguments on how much access to allow for the 20-year-old, two-pill abortion regime delivered by mail without a doctor’s prescription, which now accounts for 60% of the pregnancy terminations since Dobbs. The Supreme Court on April 24 also will hear arguments over Idaho’s challenge to the Biden administration’s interpretation that the state’s law banning all abortions except to save the mother violates the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which gives doctors discretion to administer stabilizing treatment in emergency rooms.
Not just in the courts, but at the ballot box, abortion remains a potent source of friction as voters try to figure out what the reproductive rights landscape should now look like.
Thirteen states have abortion-related issues on the ballot in November when the president and a new Congress are also selected.
Even in Louisiana, abortion still consumes a lot of time despite the issue seemingly having been settled when the Dobbs ruling automatically invoked a statewide ban on the procedure — a law sponsored by a Democratic woman senator.
The Louisiana House Committee on Law and Civil Procedure on Monday summarily killed a call for voters statewide to decide on a prohibition against punishing people who assist in an individual’s pregnancy-related decisions.
Benjamin Clapper, director of New Orleans-based Louisiana Right to Life, blames Democratic President Joe Biden for the uptick in abortion activity, including the two Supreme Court cases.
Both cases were brought about by the Biden administration’s push for abortions, Clapper said Thursday while driving home from Baton Rouge, where he had been lobbying state legislators on eight bills that deal with abortion.
If the Biden administration respected states’ rights on this issue we wouldn’t have seen so many of these lawsuits, he said.
A special election Tuesday to choose a new state representative from suburban Huntsville for the Alabama State House shocked the world of reproductive rights and showed that the issue has legs beyond the courtroom.
In a district that backed Donald Trump in 2020, Democrat Marilyn Lands ran on access to abortions and in vitro fertilization. She clocked her Republican opponent, Teddy Powell, by 25 percentage points.
LIFT Louisiana, the New Orleans-based women’s health care advocate, says the Alabama election should serve as an indicator of how voters are leaning on abortion access.
I think what this affirms is that people, even in the Deep South, favor candidates that have a reasonable position on abortion — one that recognizes the need to preserve abortion access in at least some circumstances, said LIFT spokesperson David Schmit in an emailed statement. When candidates make their position known and connect with voters on the fundamental values that drive their position, then they can win. This should be a lesson for other candidates. And there is our poll and other polls that show that Louisiana voters favor abortion services in some circumstances.
Clapper, LIFT’s frequent adversary, disagrees.
He points to the November election outcome for the Louisiana legislative seat that represents Slidell and Pearl River. Insurgent Brian Glorioso unseated incumbent state Rep. Mary DuBuisson, a fellow Republican. DuBuisson had sponsored legislation that would have allowed exemptions to the state’s near-total ban on abortions, Clapper pointed out.
We elected a very pro-life governor and a very pro-life Legislature that right now stands as the most pro-life legislature ever elected, or at least far more pro-life than the previous legislature, Clapper said, adding that the fight over abortion is far from over, despite the Dobbs decision.
