WASHINGTON: The supreme court has ruled there is no constitutional right to abortion in the United States, upending the landmark Roe v Wade case from nearly 50 years ago in a rare reversal of long-settled law that will fracture reproductive rights in America.
Joe Biden called the ruling a “tragic error” and the Republicans celebrating it “wrong, extreme and out of touch”.
The court, the president said, had pointed America down “an extreme and dangerous path”. Sounding an alarm over a concurring opinion by the conservative justice Clarence Thomas, Biden said key rights including same-sex marriage and access to contraception could now be targeted by the rightwing court.
He said: “Justice Thomas said as much today. He explicitly called to reconsider the right of marriage equality. The right of couples to make their choices on contraception.
“This is an extreme and dangerous path the court has now taken us on.”
The ruling, handed down a day after the court overturned a New York gun control law, came in the case Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which the last abortion clinic in Mississippi opposed state efforts to ban abortion after 15 weeks and overturn Roe.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” said the majority opinion, written by Samuel Alito and joined by four other conservatives, referring also to a 1992 ruling which buttressed Roe. “The constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.”
Chief Justice John Roberts said he would have upheld Mississippi’s law but not overruled Roe.
The three liberal justices dissented, saying the majority opinion “says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of”, and that conservatives well knew states would enact – and in many cases had already enacted – abortion restrictions to the moment of conception.
Under state restrictions, “a woman will have to bear her rapist’s child or a young girl her father’s – no matter if doing so will destroy her life”, the liberal justices wrote. –Agenices
