OPINION:
The Supreme Court is no longer ruled by laws — it’s now being governed by politics.
Monday’s 5-3 decision to strike down a Texas law on abortion was based on nothing more than the Justices’ cultural bias – which is to make sure abortions are available everywhere at anytime in conditions that don’t even need to be sanitary.
In his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas called out his colleagues for their lawlessness and spoke to the country’s increasingly partisan politics.
“Today’s decision will prompt some to claim victory, just as it will stiffen opponents’ will to object,” Mr. Thomas wrote, adding “the entire nation has lost something essential.”
He then wrote: “We have passed the point where ’law,’ properly speaking, has any further application.”
Justice Anthony Kennedy joined with the court’s liberals, arguing the Texas law — which required abortion providers to have hospital admitting privileges and have hospital-like health and safety rules — placed an “undue burden” on those seeking an abortion.
The term “undue burden” was first established in the 1992 abortion case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, where the court said states have the right to regulate abortion so long as they don’t place and undue burden on the woman.
“Neither of these provisions offers medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon access that each imposes,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, joined by Justices Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. “Each places a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a pre-viability abortion, each constitutes an undue burden on abortion access, and each violates the federal Constitution.”
First, I’m not sure how enhanced sanitary and surgical requirements at abortion centers is a bad thing.
The entire Texas law was a reaction to butcher Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia doctor who was charged with seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of third-degree murder for killing seven babies who survived his abortions and a woman who died after a botched painkiller injection. He didn’t bother to sanitize his equipment and sometimes gave his patients diseases and venereal infections because of it.
After yesterday’s Supreme Court decision, shops like Gosnell’s can operate freely, without the undue burden of state regulatory interference. The Texas law was completely overturned, including rules that abortion clinics apply with basic fire-safety standards.
Secondly, the Supreme Court, by redefining what “undue burden” constitutes, has made the definition so narrow, it basically outlaws any state’s regulation on abortion. Imagine if they treated the Second Amendment with such respect — there would be no concealed carry requirements, or gun-purchasing delays.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote: “The Court’s patent refusal to apply well-established law in a neutral way is indefensible and will undermine public confidence in the Court as a fair and neutral arbiter.”
Sadly, his words ring true.
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