Justices fail to correct a serious mistake in latest abortion ruling - Garnett - Our Sunday Visitor

Some people just get under one's skin.  For me relentlessly conservative Notre Dame law professor Rich Garnett is one.  Like the leaders of the United States conference of Catholic Bishops (UCCB) and New York's Archbishop Dolan he is an anti-abortion absolutist.  That has landed the hierarchy in Republican and Trumpian laps.

I am instead inclined toward Michael Sean Winters at National Catholic Reporter.  He writes this week that the Pro-life clause is stymied, but not because of the recent court decision blocking a Louisiana law.  The core of Winters argument is

The heart of the matter is whether we, as a society, are going to treat pregnant women with dignity and give them the support they need so that they never view a pregnancy as a burden. Will we restructure our society so that parenting is not a career ender? Will we make sure that pregnancy costs no more than an abortion? Will we have child support services so that a single mom does not have to carry the full weight of parenting non-stop, 24/7? John Carr, who was a longtime lead staffer on public policy at the bishops' conference, has always said we need to make abortion unthinkable before we make it illegal, and I think he is right. I do not see how the pro-life movement can or should move forward right now. We need a more propitious time and more propitious leaders.

- gwc
Justices fail to correct a serious mistake in latest abortion ruling - Our Sunday Visitor
by Rick Garnett (Notre Dame Law School)

On Monday, a divided Supreme Court handed down its decision in a case called June Medical Services v. Russo, which involves a Louisiana law requiring abortionists to hold “active admitting privileges” at a nearby hospital. By a vote of 5-4, the justices ruled that this duly enacted regulation violates the Constitution of the United States.

The court’s decision, and the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts — a judicial conservative who, until now, has consistently voted to uphold reasonable abortion restrictions — voted with the court majority, have deeply disappointed not only pro-life Americans but all those who understand how badly the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision has distorted and degraded our law, our politics and our political morality.

The June Medical Services case is a sequel of sorts to another, similar one. In 2016, a few months after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, a different five-justice majority struck down a Texas admitting-privileges requirement, concluding that it unconstitutionally burdened the legal right to abortion. A question, then, in June Medical Services was whether the Louisiana statute and its effects should be regarded any differently. Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by the court’s three other more liberal members, determined that it should not. And Roberts agreed. Louisiana’s health-and-safety regulation, he concluded, is “nearly identical to the Texas law struck down four years ago” and it “imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law.”***