Roe v. Wade is Dead

The Supreme Court's latest decision, to allow Texas' abortion to remain in force while expediting arguments, is clearly a part the (illegitimate) majority's attempt to reverse Roe v. Wade:

The Supreme Court on Friday once again refused to immediately block a Texas law that bans most abortions after six weeks. But in an unusual move, the justices agreed to fast-track their consideration of appeals from the Justice Department and abortion providers in Texas, scheduling arguments for Nov. 1.

The justices will now be grappling with two high-profile abortion cases in the space of a month. The case from Texas will require them to sort through complex procedural questions prompted by a novel law drafted to avoid review in federal court — an approach to restricting abortion that other states are also considering.

Then, on Dec. 1, the court will hear a challenge to a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks and that anti-abortion activists hope will lead the court’s expanded conservative majority to overturn or undermine the constitutional right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade in 1973.

The court’s decision not to bar enforcement of the Texas law was at least a short-term victory for anti-abortion forces. As a practical matter, it means that the procedure will remain all but unavailable for now in the state despite the court’s own precedents forbidding states from banning abortion before fetal viability, at around 23 weeks.

………

Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a dissent from the court’s refusal to block the law in the meantime.

“For the second time, the court is presented with an application to enjoin a statute enacted in open disregard of the constitutional rights of women seeking abortion care in Texas,” she wrote. “For the second time, the court declines to act immediately to protect these women from grave and irreparable harm.”

………

The justices have also come under intensifying criticism for dealing with important issues not through their regular process of issuing elaborate decisions following full briefing and oral arguments but rather in a more rushed way on their so-called shadow docket. Such cases are often decided in orders that can contain little or no reasoning. Until now the justices were considering the Texas case on such an emergency basis.

Cases heard through the regular process — the “merits docket” — are usually argued months after the court agrees to hear them, and the court’s decision in the Texas case to schedule an argument just 10 days after granting review was probably the product of negotiation.

The court rarely acts that fast, and the exceptions tend to come in significant cases like Bush v. Gore, the 2000 case that handed the presidency to George W. Bush, and the Pentagon Papers case in 1971, which rejected the Nixon administration’s efforts to block publication of a secret history of the Vietnam War.

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The question the court will answer in the providers’ appeal is “whether a state can insulate from federal court review a law that prohibits the exercise of a constitutional right by delegating to the general public the authority to enforce that prohi­bition through civil actions.”

The court is trying to balance the desire of its corrupt majority to eliminate a woman's right to an abortion, and eventually a woman's right to contraception, against its concern that doing so will undermine its legitimacy, possibly by implementing term limits or expanding the courts.

It is a hypocritical and dishonest calculus, and should be declared as such.