Abortion advocates have filed a brief with the Supreme Court as it prepares to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the biggest case concerning abortion regulations to come before the bench since Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The abortionists’ argument relies almost entirely on the principle of stare decisis, the idea that the court must strike down abortion restrictions because it has ruled against them in the past. But this claim, similar to so many the pro-choice movement has made, is unconvincing and weak: Precedent alone is not enough to bind the Supreme Court to a decision, especially if the precedent in question is void of any constitutional and moral basis.
The abortionists write:
With regard to the question of viability and whether Mississippi can prohibit abortion after 15 weeks’ gestation, the abortionists do not even try to wrestle with the viability marker itself but instead point back to Casey as proof that they shouldn’t need to:
The abortionists then argue that the right to abortion is worth preserving simply because it’s been around for so long:
Again, these arguments are not convincing in the slightest. The legal right to discriminate against other human beings because of their skin color was also around for a long time — does that mean the Supreme Court was wrong to overthrow it in Brown v. Board of Education? Or could it be that the court gets things wrong, too, and has a responsibility to revisit its past decisions for that reason?
The fact that these abortion advocates did not even try to base their argument on anything but existing precedent is telling. To be fair, though, what other defense do they have? They know there is no moral justification for stopping the heartbeat of an unborn child in the womb. They know there is no special constitutional right that gives one person the power to decide whether another person lives. All they have is Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey — two flawed decisions that buckle under the smallest amount of legal scrutiny.
The Supreme Court has a chance to correct course and overturn Roe and Casey. It must not let precedent, or the pro-choice advocates who depend upon it, stop it from doing what is legally and ethically right.
