Pro-life demonstrators in Washington celebrate outside the Supreme Court June 24, 2022, as the court overruled the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion decision. (CNS photo/Evelyn Hockstein, Reuters)
WASHINGTON — In a 5-4 decision June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its nearly 50-year-old decision in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion in this country. The court’s 213-page ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization was not totally unexpected due to the leak of an opinion draft a month earlier. The ruling emphasizes that there is no constitutional right to abortion in the United States. The Dobbs case focused on an abortion clinic in Mississippi opposed to the state’s law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The court’s reversal of its long-standing abortion ruling brings abortion policy decisions to the state level. At least half of states plan to ban or restrict abortions with this decision in place. “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court’s opinion. Casey v. Planned Parenthood is the 1992 decision that affirmed Roe. Also of interest... Catholic agencies, church expect to help more women, newborns after Dobbs NASHVILLE, Tenn. — With the reversal of Roe, Judy Orr, executive director of Catholic Charities in the Nashville Diocese, and the agency’s adoption and pregnancy counseling staff expect an uptick in the need for those services. “Our society is going to be compelled to provide more compassion and support for mothers who do not want to place their children for adoption,” Orr said. “We are going to have to develop systems that promote a more progressive approach to child rearing, such that it is not an either/or proposition for a mother/family faced with a new baby they do not feel they can manage,” she said. “In societies in the past, a multigenerational extended family helped raise the children, and there was a lot more ‘sharing’ of child-rearing responsibilities, so that the mother did not have to sever ties with her child altogether,” Orr added. This is why Catholic Charities will not only emphasize its adoption services but also its pregnancy counseling. “I feel this is a prime opportunity for our agency to emphasize our pregnancy counseling program aside from adoption,” said Julie Bolles, a Catholic Charities therapist who works with individuals and families. “I believe we will have increased opportunity to counsel and provide support and, most importantly, provide education for women about their options in an unplanned pregnancy, so they can make the decision that is best for them,” she said. The court’s reversal of Roe puts abortion policy decisions in the hands of the states. At least half plan to ban or restrict abortions with this decision in place, and 13 states have “trigger” laws that were set to ban abortion if the Dobbs ruling reversed Roe. Tennessee is one of those with such a law: Nearly all abortions will be illegal in the state within 30 days of the court’s decision. The law includes an exception to protect the life of the mother. — Katie Peterson, Catholic News Service Alito was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Chief Justice John Roberts, in a separate opinion, said he agreed with the majority that the Mississippi abortion restriction should be upheld, but he said the court should not have overturned its Roe decision. Alito, writing for the majority, said: “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.” U.S. Catholic bishops who have supported a reversal of Roe immediately reacted positively to the court’s decision that comes at the end of this year’s term. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called the decision a “historic day in the life of our country, one that stirs our thoughts, emotions and prayers.” “We pray that our elected officials will now enact laws and policies that promote and protect the most vulnerable among us,” said the June 24 statement by Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez, USCCB president, and Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities. “We give thanks to God for today’s decision ... This just decision will save countless innocent children simply waiting to be born,” said the New York Catholic bishops in a statement shortly after the court’s opinion was released. Cardinal Cupich welcomed the decision. “We welcome this important ruling and the opportunity it creates for a national conversation on protecting human life in the womb and promoting human dignity at all stages of life,” he wrote in a statement. “This moment should serve as a turning point in our dialogue about the place an unborn child holds in our nation, about our responsibility to listen to women and support them through pregnancies and after the birth of their children, and about the need to refocus our national priorities to support families, particularly those in need.” Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston said in a statement that the Catholic Church’s advocacy for life beginning at conception is not just a religious, but a stand for human rights. “During the past half-century, as the abortion debate continued, the Catholic Church has often been accused of imposing a religious belief on our pluralistic society,” Cardinal O’Malley wrote. “It is indeed the case that, when addressing the Catholic community, the church has used both religious and moral arguments to oppose abortion. But when engaging the wider American civil society, elected officials, and our legal system, the church has defended human life from its inception as a matter of human rights. Our continued efforts in advocating our position on the protection of unborn children is consistent with our advocacy for issues affecting the dignity of all persons at all stages and in all circumstances of life.” Protesters were outside the court when the ruling came down, as they have been for days, anticipating it. Those on both sides of issue were also at the court when the document first leaked. The Dobbs opinion is similar to the leaked draft that called Roe “egregiously wrong from the start.” Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan wrote a joint dissent that said: “Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws, one result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens.” They also noted that their dissent “with sorrow — for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection.” When the court announced last year that it would take this case, after considering it more than a dozen times since 2020, the justices said they would only review one of the three questions presented to them: “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” That point of viability — when a fetus is said to be able to survive on its own — was a key point in this case, because the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that states cannot restrict abortion before 24 weeks, or when a fetus could survive on its own. A friend-of-the-court brief submitted by the USCCB stressed that abortion is not a right created by the Constitution and called it “inherently different from other types of personal decisions to which this court has accorded constitutional protection.” Referring to the court’s major abortion decisions, the brief also warned that if the Supreme Court “continues to treat abortion as a constitutional issue,” it will face more questions in the future about “what sorts of abortion regulations are permissible.”
Statement of Cardinal Cupich on the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturns the court’s tragic 1973 decision that removed legal protection for unborn children.
Cardinal Cupich: Abortion law ‘sad moment in our history’ The Illinois legislature passed a law that specifically defines abortion as health care and says that a “fertilized egg, embryo or fetus” does not have any independent rights under the laws of the state, bucking the trend of states enacting more restrictive abortion laws.
Prenatal diagnosis of illness is no excuse for abortion, pope says "Abortion is never the answer" to couples seeking a way to deal with a prenatal diagnosis of serious illness or disability, Pope Francis said.