The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Wednesday in a challenge to Mississippi’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a blockbuster case with the potential to upend reproductive rights across the nation.
In the most closely watched dispute the high court has tackled in years, the justices will consider not only whether to uphold the Mississippi law but whether to overturn its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that established a constitutional right to abortion.
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From the commentary of the Justices, I’m not so sure they are listening…
God have mercy! They are scrutinizing life.
Mississippi as a state has always been low on the list of states held in high regard. Swerna, Goodman, and Chaney were murdered there. These young civil rights activists are history of a time when lawlessness was embraced by many in America. In the 60 years since their death, not much has improved in Mississippi. Now, this state is before the Supreme Court shamelessly asking if can be allowed to take the life of women in this state, and across the nation under its low standards of social protections. Perhaps some states may again consider leaving the safety of American nationality and go it alone as a small improvised foreign country…as indeed, Mississippi yearns to become…
Yawn. Can you people deal with the reality today?
Really? You want to drag those three Freedom Riders who were kidnapped, murdered and buried under an earthen dam by Democrats into this?
Now, you claim Mississippi “…is before the court shamelessly asking if it can be allowed to take the life of women…” I notice that you make no impassioned plea on behalf of the babies, more killings principally at the behest of Democrats?
When you, as a group, change your minds on this, as on other issues, will you cast the blame on “the Court?” on America? on Americans? the Constitution, itself? Upon whom will you bestow the shame and blame for a decision you now appear to demand?
Speak for yourself…. I am a Native of Mississippi. I love this state. You are just prejudiced against us.. You bringing up something from 60 years ago.. smh.
Earlier today, one argument came up that women need special protection from the natural consequences of pregnancy, as well as the life changing inevitabilities likely to immediately follow. I thought that was a great point.
However, defining a line of viability to spare the court from having to delve into philosophy of the definition of life itself… while it may seem a fair prospect – I believe it misses a very important point.
The women should and *do* legally have special protection for their liberty, autonomy, and privacy – before a baby is made. Whether or not the woman or society respects or protects those rights *before* a pregnancy ensues should be the question here.
Once a fetus is created, I believe we may have missed the boat on protecting those rights. At that point, we didn’t. Responsibilities naturally occur. The chance to respect those rights, as well as the naturally occurring consequences of responsibility should not put a fetus’ life in jeopardy. We should not have a right to take a life because that life may hinder our liberty, autonomy, privacy, or freedom. Because if we can take a life – for any reason – as a state at any point before birth, then there will be no precedent to stop the state eventually, from at least potentially having the right to take a life at any further point in human development.
We, as a society, have the freedom to protect ourselves from childbearing. But it’s not just a woman’s responsibility. Period. As a wife and mom who can barely afford her 4th child, after more than one failure of birth control, I see the temptation to end a pregnancy as seeming to offer a lure of personal freedom, as well as freeing the state from having to raise the child, including handle expenses incurred. That is not lost. Having an abortion can feel like the right, responsible thing to do if you don’t have the support structures through family, community, or state safety net to manage bearing or raising the child, especially if the child may have some defect that could affect the quality of their whole life. It may feel like the responsible, even kind thing to do to end that life before it begins.
But that is a lure. It’s false. Their blood on our hands (and I have assisted in the removal of ectopic pregnancy, and seen a fetus the size of a silver dollar) is still human blood. And it’s innocent. And it can’t know. It can’t understand. But it can and does feel. The stressors, it hears the voices… without being able to make sense of its’ own senses.
And what if the fetus is a woman? Who is protecting her rights to liberty – from the womb? To life? To breath?
Once the fetus is in utero, any point seems moot to me about a woman’s rights. Because it’s society’s, men’s, women’s, communities together that should have protected her right not to reproduce before she did, but all those failed, and we owe it to the next generation to save their lives. We may even owe it to our own.
Many folks feel certain changes are unimaginable in the United States of America, a country that has been so robustly protected by it’s constitution. However, evidence suggests we might recently be starting to go through those. So, who are we to think we’d be any different than other countries who have slid down this path?
What if abortion were considered simply an age-based genocide? What if that age limit got extended beyond birth? It already has in New York. We have seen that. What protections are in place to protect any of us from post-birth abortions? This is a question we must begin asking before it’s too late for that potential outcome rather than after.
I know women will continue to have abortions no matter what. At least keeping abortion legal can provide them safe options that may include saving their own lives from circumstances that tempt them to suicide.
I fear as a state though that if we condone it, there’s a fine line between promoting it, and if we promote it… we promote a society that endorses and funds it… to endorse or fund murder of the innocent to concede to irresponsibility – could, down the line, have some sort of other consequences.
For me this is a spiritual potential consequence, but I was staunchly agnostic for over a decade of my adult life, so I’m certainly not going to push my beliefs on others. Because I’m American, and in so being, I believe in right to life for Buddhists, Muslims, Any and all sects of Christianity, Atheists, Hindus, or any other spirituality whether or not the life choice of spirituality of any soul matches my own. I believe in the constitutional right to life, and that if we keep that an overarching value, and endorse instead the value of life itself – that it is still one of our core values, above and beyond choices or responsibilities or rights… if we hold that up as a core value of our democracy, then we have a chance against any other type of gevncoide happening on our soil ever again.
But if we lose that, if we give up the value of life, we may be more vulnerable to enemies both foreign and domestic to our long-term interests than we could ever prepare for.
I say this as someone who studied International Economic Security Policy at The University of Denver twenty years ago, over 9/11/01. At the time, the International Studies school there was one of the top 5 in the country, and likely one of the top 6 in the world. The fact that it’s now referred to as the Korbel School For Globalization should illustrate how far it has come in the last two decades.
After that, I worked in executive management for a domestic-based non-profit private foundation that delivers health care specific to women’s health initiatives to developing nations (3rd world). Those women aren’t trying to uphold their rights to abortions. They were trying to extinguish tumors in their abdomens to make room for more babies. Even in rural, impoverished villages, babies are considered a blessing better than wealth. They simply aren’t rich enough to afford the problems with pregnancy western women are privileged to have.
Abortion is so much a first world problem. The fact that we are still dealing with it after so many decades illustrates our societal ignorance.
That should be the problem we spend time, energy, money, and effort solving. Societal ignorance. What can we learn from women, families, and the peoples of less economically viable countries?
Women, and men, and people in general. We need to stand up for each other rather than fighting to end one another’s lives.
I think it should be illegal but unenforced, so safe options still exist, without the state risking it becoming endorsed.
We can’t say it’s ok to end an innocent life because two others couldn’t or wouldn’t support the responsibilities they broke integrity from in creating it. We can’t let absolution of responsibilities lead policy if we want to maintain any sense of integrity on the world’s stage, or even domestically. It puts the future of the U.S. at serious risk, including the citizens’ lives. Your lives. Not just your babies’ lives. Or fetus’s lives.
If you can’t see the global relationship there, you shouldn’t be in charge of making this decision here.
Problems here are in your presumptions.
1. You presume that it is life in the first place. Potential is not actual.
2. You presume a woman has a partner instead of a rapist, contraceptive failure, or medical complication.
3. You presume responsibilities based upon the other presumptions you have, where none exist for the state to enforce.
4. You presume to be the arbiter of what constitutes integrity. Forcing a person to surrender their liberty and endure a lengthy, traumatic, costly, and potentially lethal process with further expense and obligation at the conclusion is NOT how any reasonable person would describe integrity.
The “people” is also represented by the Supreme Court.
Telling the Supreme Court that he knows when and how they made mistakes in their legal decisions is probably not the best way to persuade them to overturn this Roe v. Wade to make Mississippi, and states like Ol Miss. happy!
Maybe it is the right way to ask the Justices what they, the attorneys, want outright. The flaws of Roe vs Wade are well known and well documented. I think that Clarence Thomas will write the majority oppinion, overturning this legislation from the bench.
@Freedom Fighter I agree with you..
@Share Bright Light Thank you very much.
@Freedom Fighter Only Dredd Scott stands as the worst interpretation of law in US history in comparison to Roe. Only fools and liars view Roe v Wade as a solid legal analysis.
Mississippi is among the worst states for teen pregnancy , poverty and people on welfare.
Ladies in Mississippi please keep your legs together
There are so many people who want children but are unable to have them and people who take that blessing for granted
So very, very true… I love these comments.
There are abt 300,000 children waiting for adoption in america at the moment. in texas there are 3000 in the broken foster care system.
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One thing that should be pointed out is that the statement, “twenty-five percent of American women will have an abortion before the age of forty” comes from a Guttenmacher Study in October 2017. The study actually states; “We used secondary data from the Abortion Patient Survey, the American Community Survey, and the National Survey of Family Growth to estimate abortion rates. We used information from the Abortion Patient Survey to estimate the lifetime incidence of abortion.” IOW, they “estimated data based only on a surveys which will be mostly completed by individuals who have either had an abortion or are pro-choice. There is no way to do a reasonable past wise regressive study on this data and therefore it isn’t anything much more than a guess. Such information should not be seen as valid or peer reviewed and ought not be used in a court of law.
Exactly. I hope they have enough wisdom to see this. You are smart. Thank you for this information for me. I just spent three days, 24 hours a day in a prayer marathon for this decision.
Justice Sotomayor asked; “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” Sotomayor said during oral arguments Wednesday morning. “I don’t see how it is possible.” To that I would say, Justice Sotomayor, you and your fellow justices are to make decisions on the law and you are to do so without political consideration but to focus on the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Do you, Justice Sotomayor, not believe you can do that or do you simply believe that if you make a decision based upon the Constitution that some will not respect and value that decision but will only see it as political? While we must all be honest and admit this is a political / social issue, the fact that a sitting Justice made this statement is stunning, IMO. Maybe she could help by not seeing things in a political view but rather in a legal view.
Stare Decisis – Let it stand. Supreme Courts can change their minds and rule differently than they did before, but they need good reasons to do so, and it helps if their opinion is unanimous or nearly so. Otherwise, their rulings appear (and are) arbitrary — even, shall we say? — partisan. In this case 50 years on there are no good reasons. Its ideology.
@Peak Nonsense Your name suits you. You made all that up. None of this is analogous to parents and children. This is liberty and state control of bodily autonomy.
@Luke Anderson Thanks. I picked it for people like you who can’t deal with the argument so I know who to block because they’re irrelevant. Great job
Thank you. I was soooo mad when I heard her say that.
@Peak Nonsense Thank you. I have been saying it all day.
Catholics and Christians should always have their houses in order for what may come.
Firstly Catholic are Christians and secondly God is our strength and His house is always in order.
God’s house is perfection
Lol the Supreme Court must uphold terrible rulings in order to keep the public trust. Makes total sense.
I like your sense of humor. I could not believe these people with their high levels of educations would even dare say something like that.
“Including the second amendment btw”
Your political bias is showing.
I was wondering if anyone else caught on to that. She was throwing him a partisan talking point bone and it was ridiculous.
Selfish act to kill the most innocent one (the baby) for convenience of taking ZERO responsibility.
@Freedom Fighter if you want it to be that concret as in every, then nothing in this world get done. Also, how can you say most and not let that mindset swing the other way. If your statement applies to 50% or above. u may have an argument. But if it’s 90 the other, then what. 10% get to over rule over the 90. Secondly, this isn’t just about careless decisions. If there prenatal issues, u should have ability not undertake those emotional and financial costs. Also, I myself was difficult birth, father had to make a decision, he chose the mother which makes the most sense, but I also survived. If I wasn’t born, I dont give a sh&t. If your thought process is on the issue of just murder, then u may have to reevaluate all the other sh5t we allow.
@Kam Man What percentage of children in foster care commits suicide?
@Freedom Fighter I think we both agree we don’t actually know all too much about foster care system. But ur also missing the point. It’s okay, they’re not going overturn this.
I agree
yeah who cares if the mother dies, right??
Interesting that you have left out the first 10 minutes of opening comments.
Though both sides can put forth their moral arguments and the lawyers can decide the laws, the fact remains, its the individual’s decision thats going to make the choice.
Yes and that is why we have rule of law to put individual’s in jail if they brake the law. Welcome in society
Let’s talk about the impact that Roe v Wade has had on the millions of lives that are snuffed out every year for the convenience of a woman. Do we legalize the murder of individuals simply because they affect our lives negatively?
What then about the ones who have become a physical and financial burden because of terminal cancer, or Alzheimer’s?
I’ll tell you why we don’t make the God decisions. Because life is precious. From the first heartbeat to the last!
I urge the court to replace the Roe V Wade verdict with the “Heartbeat Law”.
We don’t have the power to bring back those millions of Americans lost to abortion. We do have the power to save those lives which are conceived from this time forward.
Thank you so much, Ron, for this wisdom.. I am so thankful for wisdom like yours.
The “heartbeat law” is not based off of any kind of scientific fact. There is no developed heart or heartbeat at 6 weeks. The sound heard on ultrasounds is not a heartbeat, it’s an electrical impulse where the heart will eventually develop. Viability is set at week 24 because that is about when the spinal cord, the nervous system and the part of the brain associated with consciousness is fully developed.
for the convenience of women?!! typical male response.
15 weeks is a long time. I don’t see why anyone would be against this unless the pregnancy becomes life threatening.