Pro-abortion rights activists protest outside the Supreme Court building, ahead of arguments in the Mississippi abortion rights case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, in Washington, U.S., December 1, 2021.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Wednesday expressed fear that a bid to overturn decades-old abortion rights, if successful, would destroy the public perception of the high court, and thus the institution itself.
“Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” asked Sotomayor, one of three liberal justices on the nine-member bench, at the start of oral arguments in a case challenging Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
“I don’t see how it is possible,” Sotomayor said.
Roe, Casey and other “watershed decisions” — such as Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled segregation unconstitutional — have created an “entrenched set of expectations in our society,” Sotomayor said.
“If people actually believe it’s all political, how will we survive? How will the court survive?” Sotomayor asked.
The case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, marks the most significant challenge to abortion rights in decades. It centers on a Mississippi law that would ban almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Lower courts blocked the law, ruling that it violates the rights enshrined by the Supreme Court’s decisions in 1973’s Roe and 1992’s Casey.
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