A draft supreme court opinion, apparently by the conservative justice Samuel Alito, was leaked to Politico for a story published late on Monday. It appears to show that the court is preparing to rule in favour of Mississippi in a case over whether the state can outlaw nearly all abortions at and after 15 weeks gestation – a direct challenge to the guarantee of abortion rights enshrined in Roe v Wade.
The 98-page document, which includes 118 footnotes and a 31-page appendix on historical state abortion laws, was published in full. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” it says. “Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.”
It says Roe v Wade “must be overruled” and goes on: “It is time to heed the constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... roe-v-wade
If anything shows the weakness of the American system of government it is that such an important matter has been left up in the air and unaddressed by the Federal government for as long as this has.
States claimed the rights to segregate, states claimed the rights to keep Black people off TV current affairs, states claimed the right to do many things that fly in the face of the US founding principal.
In every other country laws have been written, they have been argued, negotiated and renogotiated and changed as the science changes and social attitudes evolve. It hasn't been an easy conversation but the experience of Ireland where there was a constitutional ban on abortion shows how bad things can get for women when their right to make their own health decisions was taken away. Republican cowardice meant they have literally subverted the constitution - breaking the separation of Church and state and supporting an armed insurrection against the lawfully elected government - to get their way while Democrat cowardice has meant they have never seen it as politically expedient to introduce laws Republicans would have to vote against or repeal in order to take away women's reproductive rights.
Roe v Wade was left as the lone bulwark against Churches taking over the government and women being made second class citizens in the US. The scandal isn't that the single line of defence is being breached, it's that it was the single line of defence.