Today, Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart told the justices on the nation’s highest court that it’s time to overturn Roe v. Wade so states that provide legal protections for unborn children.
“Roe versus Wade and Planned Parenthood versus Casey haunt our country,” Stewart told the Supreme Court as it opened hearings on the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“They have no basis in the Constitution. They have no home in our history or traditions. They’ve damaged the democratic process. They’ve poisoned the law. They’ve choked off compromise. For fifty years they’ve kept this Court at the center of a political battle that it can never resolve. And fifty years on, they stand alone: nowhere else does this Court recognize a right to end a human life,” he said.
For decades, under Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, states have been prohibited from banning abortions before viability. As a result, about 63 million unborn babies and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of mothers have died in supposedly “safe,” legal abortions. Now the Supreme Court has agreed to re-consider this precedent and decide “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortion are unconstitutional.”
The Mississippi law at the center of the case would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a point at which most Americans agree unborn babies should be protected under the law.
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The state Solicitor General continued:
Consider this case. The Mississippi law here prohibits abortions after 15 weeks. The law includes robust exceptions for a woman’s life and health. It leaves months to obtain an abortion. Yet the courts below struck the law down. It didn’t matter that the law applies when an unborn child is undeniably human, when risks to women surge, and when the common abortion procedure is brutal.
The lower courts held that because the law prohibits abortions before viability, it is unconstitutional no matter what. Roe and Casey’s core holding, according to those courts, is that a State can protect an unborn girl’s life when she just barely can survive outside the womb—but not any earlier, when she needs a little more help. That is the world under Roe and Casey.
That is not the world the Constitution promises. The Constitution places its trust in the people. On hard issue after hard issue, the people make this country work. Abortion is a hard issue. It demands the best from all of us, not a judgment by just a few of us. When an issue affects everyone—and when the Constitution does not take sides on it—it belongs to the people. Roe and Casey have failed. But the people, if given the chance, will succeed. This Court should overrule Roe and Casey and uphold the State’s law.
During the hearing, Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked Stewart a question to make it clear he thinks the people and not the courts should make decisions on aboritons.
“We’re saying it’s left to the people, your honor,” Stewart said.
Asked by Justice Sotormayor why Roe should be overturned, the Mississippi attorney made it clear that Roe and abortion kill unborn children.
Stewart responded that abortion involves “the purposeful termination of human life.”
