Hey, it’s one year to the presidential elections! The abortion issue is coming up everywhere. People want to choose a candidate that fits their view(s) on abortion. A lot of people make this their number one issue in choosing a candidate. That’s just crazy! There are so many other issues that are far more important. And more issues that the President has direct control of. See that’s the thing, the President has no power to make abortion illegal. All he/she can do is appoint judges to the Supreme Court that he/she feels would vote for or against making abortion illegal if the vote were to come before the Supreme Court again. And that’s a big if. Huge. See the Supreme Court made a ruling, Roe v. Wade, that makes it a violation of the U.S. Constitution (i.e. makes it illegal) to pass a law at either the state or federal level that would make abortion illegal. So to change this, or “overturn” it, this is what would need to happen:
A jurisdiction would have to manage to pass an unconstitutional law making abortion illegal. This is extremely hard to do, if not impossible and illegal. But for argument’s sake, let’s say it happens. A woman would then have to get an abortion. She would then have to be arrested by the authorities in this jurisdiction for this illegal abortion. She would then need to defend her right to have an abortion in a court trial. She would have to lose her case. This would be an extremely hard case to lose with Roe v. Wade existing as it does. She would then have to appeal her case all the way up and through the state and federal courts, losing all the way. The Supreme Court would have to decide to hear her case. It would then need to ignore Roe v. Wade and uphold the decisions of the all the lower courts and make a decision based on the wording of the U.S. Constitution that would declare that abortions are illegal and unconstitutional.
In the Supreme Court, there is no formal overturning process beyond the usual process of hearing a case and making a ruling. Roe v. Wade cannot be tried and decided again. That would be double jeopardy, which is illegal under U.S. law. Roe v. Wade ran out its appeal process, made it to the highest court in the U.S., a ruling was made, and the buck stops there. The Supreme Court, like most courts, follows the principle of stare decisis, which means it makes its decisions consistent with previous decisions of the Court, or lower courts, irrespective of who may currently sit on the bench of the Court. It’s what’s called legal precedence, which we’ve all heard of. It’s designed to have court cases tried from the perspective of the rule of law, not from the perspective of personal opinion or whimsy. So even if you fill the Supreme Court with judges morally opposed to abortion, the Court could not ethically ignore the decision of Roe v. Wade. To come up with a compelling argument against Roe v. Wade that remains both constitutional and legally ethical is almost impossible.
See how hard this is?
If you are against abortion, don’t have an abortion.
If you are against gay marriage, don’t marry someone of your gender.
If you are against stem-cell research, don’t include stem-cells in your research.
See how it works?
