The Right To An Abortion May Die With A Whimper This Week

While the media is spending hours discussing the possibilities of Trump shutting down the government again and giving free media to a man whose only qualification is that he has boatloads of money, most of it earned on the backs of low wage workers overseas, the constitutional right to an abortion is about to die with barely a whimper.

Any moment now, the Supreme Court will decide on whether to hear the case of June Medical Services v. Gee. The case involves a Louisiana law that requires a doctor performing an abortion to “have active admitting privileges at a hospital that is located not further than thirty miles from the location at which the abortion is performed or induced and that provides obstetrical or gynecological health care services.” A virtually identical law in Texas was struck down in Texas in 2016, with Justice Kennedy providing the fifth vote in the decision. If it had been allowed to stand, the entire state of Texas would be served by just ten abortion clinics.

But that was two years ago and the makeup of the Court has drifted even farther to the right with the ascension of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Since then, anti-abortion activists advocates and judges have been itching to provide a case for the Court to use to overturn Roe. Needless to say, the Fifth Circuit was gladly willing to provide the case. In a brazen rejection of precedent and the 2016 Court decision, the Fifth Circuit actually upheld the constitutionality of the Louisiana law. The appeal of that decision is now in front of the Supreme Court.

The expectation is that the Court will refuse to hear the appeal or provide a stay, with the five conservative justices providing the margin of victory. Incredibly, abortion rights defenders will have to put their hope in Justice Roberts who may believe that allowing this broadside against precedent to stand would further tarnish his already blackened legacy.

Roberts and the conservatives have made a point of avoiding the most controversial decisions this term in an apparent effort to seem reasonable before embarking on implementing their radical vision of America. Hopefully, that attitude will allow them to either provide a stay or actually take this case and overrule the Fifth Circuit, postponing their inevitable gutting of Roe v Wade for another day and providing additional evidence that they are not as radical as they really are. But if the court refuses to hear the appeal, Roe will die with a whimper because every legislature and lower court will know that it is open season on Roe and the Supreme Court will go along.