John Roberts Is No Pro-Choice Hero: The latest Supreme Court decision sets the stage...

[BigmanPigman]

"John Roberts Is No Pro-Choice Hero
The latest Supreme Court decision sets the stage for further attacks on abortion rights."

By The Editorial Board
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/opinion/supreme-court-abortion.html#click=https://t.co/OK13VjGPPE

"Would the chief justice’s disapproval of abortion outweigh his desire for the court to respect its own very recent precedent?"

"It turns out that it didn’t. In a concurring opinion that provided the fifth vote for a majority, the chief justice wrote that the court’s doctrine requires it to “treat like cases alike.” Because the Louisiana law — which requires doctors who perform abortions to get admitting privileges at a hospital near their clinic, supposedly in the interests of women’s health and safety — was more or less a carbon copy of the Texas law the court previously struck down, and because it burdened women in the same way, it “cannot stand,” he wrote."

"That’s good as far as it goes, which is not very far. It would be a mistake to interpret this decision as a sign that the chief justice has had a change of heart about protecting the bodily autonomy of American women. Even in his concurring opinion, Chief Justice Roberts said that he still believes that the Texas case was “wrongly decided” and that he voted to strike down the Louisiana law solely out of respect for precedent. He appears to have decided that the circumstances of this case were not ideal for crippling reproductive rights — but he left the door open to doing so in the future. Monday’s decision, with the plurality opinion written by Justice Stephen Breyer, isn’t so much good news for reproductive freedom as it is a temporary reprieve from all the bad."

"Abortion access in many parts of the country is abysmal — five states have only one abortion clinic, for instance. If the Louisiana law had been upheld, clinics in that state (which has only three such facilities) and across the country could have closed, forcing many women to travel longer distances at prohibitive expense to receive reproductive health care."

[dawg day]

1. Well, it's not as bad as allowing the law to stand

So much of this is kicking the can down the road until Biden is in office and can at least protect the sane side of the supreme court.

[regnaD kciN]

2. While those are some good points...

...the fact that he was willing to let his respect for precedent (even if he personally thinks the case was wrongly-decided) overrule other arguments really leaves him no choice but to uphold Roe on the same principle, should right-to-lifers ever try to push a case to overturn it.

No one thinks that Roberts is a "pro-choice hero," or that he's suddenly had a personal change of heart on abortion. That isn't necessary from any judge or justice -- what is necessary is that they set aside their personal beliefs and stick to interpreting the law as written and as set by precedent. Most Republican nominees will just enshrine their personal agenda as law, no matter how it violates precedent. It seems Roberts isn't one of them, which also bodes well for same-sex marriage in the future (assuming Trump loses, and doesn't get the chance to appoint another ideologue, of course).

[BlueMTexpat]

3. Well-stated.

Thank you.