![]() ![]() (Justices Hugo Black and John Marshal Harlan had suddenly retired due to ill health.) Wade controversy, arising from the plight of a Texas carnival worker who said she was raped, was first argued in December 1971 and considered by a seven-justice bench. Today, six of the nine justices are Catholic. When Roe was decided, Brennan was the only Catholic justice. Wade, some states were beginning to legalize abortion, but nationwide momentum was slow because of religious opposition, notably from the Catholic Church. Stephen Breyer says now isn't the time to lose faith in the Supreme CourtĪbortion cases count among the most wrenching for the court, stirring religious, cultural and economic interests. Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.” O’Connor, the country’s first woman justice, said from the bench when the case was handed down, “Some of us as individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that can’t control our decision. Their decision, joined by two other justices and over the dissent of four others, declared that Roe’s “essential holding … is a recognition of the right of the woman to choose to have an abortion before viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the State.” Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter – all nominated by Republican presidents – worked secretly at first, without consulting other colleagues, to forge a compromise that would affirm Roe. Casey, which was a direct challenge to the right to obtain an abortion. Nearly 20 years later, similar tensions and uncertainty shrouded the dispute of Planned Parenthood v. Justice William Brennan wrote in his personal account of Roe, available in his papers at the Library of Congress, that initially “it looked extremely doubtful that there would be a majority for the position that restrictive abortion laws are unconstitutional.” ![]() The times were not as polarized, and Republicans played leading roles in crafting the decisions. Overall, the now-public archives of justices who decided the two momentous abortion cases demonstrate individual soul-searching, as well as larger regard for the integrity of the court. Justice Clarence Thomas: the Supreme Court's influencer Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images Supreme Court, giving the court a 6-3 conservative majority that could determine the future of the Affordable Care Act and abortion rights. The Senate voted 52-48 Monday to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, listens during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Oct. The court had grounded the right to end a pregnancy in the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process guarantee of personal liberty.Ĭlarence Thomas, associate justice of the U.S. Some of that history has surfaced in “friend of the court” briefs in the Mississippi case and may be mined by the justices as they take up the most important abortion case since 1992, when the court affirmed Roe in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Penn sylvania v. “There is a practical aspect, too,” he continued in a memo to fellow justices, “for I am sure that there are many pregnant women, particularly younger girls, who may refuse to face the fact of pregnancy and who, for one reason or another, do not get around to medical consultation until the end of the first trimester is upon them or, indeed, has passed.” He was persuaded to delay that cutoff, by roughly another 12 weeks, after an initial suggestion by Justice Lewis Powell and reinforcement by others in the Roe majority.īlackmun himself explained as he prepared to amend his views that viability “has logical and biological justifications.” Justice Harry Blackmun, writing the Roe opinion, at first considered the end of the first trimester of pregnancy (at about 12 weeks) as a dividing line. ![]() The case will lay bare the direction of the evolving court under Chief Justice John Roberts, perhaps to make the most significant departure yet from courts back a half century. In the balance lie women’s reproductive rights and the scope of constitutional privacy protection. The court will revisit that constitutional test tied to fetal viability on December 1 when it hears the challenge to a Mississippi law that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Alex Wong/Getty ImagesĬhief Justice John Roberts is at the epicenter of an abortion dispute before the Supreme Court President Donald Trump's defense team started to present its arguments today in the Senate impeachment trial. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts leaves after day five of the Senate impeachment trial against President Donald Trump at the U.S. ![]()
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