A majority of U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) justices allegedly still maintain that the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which federally legalized abortion in the United States, is unconstitutional. According to a Saturday report from The Washington Post, “as of last week, the majority of five justices to strike Roe remains intact, according to three conservatives close to the court.”
Published in Politico last week, the leaked February draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito makes clear that Roe “must be overruled,” with the high court noting how it “was egregiously wrong from the start” and that its “reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.”
“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” Alito wrote.
In addition to Alito, the majority is comprised of Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, according to the Politico and Post reports.
Noticeably absent from the majority opinion, however, is Chief Justice John Roberts, who is reportedly set to join the Democrat-appointed justices in opposing the rectification of the high court’s previous rulings on abortion.
“A person close to the most conservative members of the court said Roberts told his fellow jurists in a private conference in early December that he planned to uphold the state law and write an opinion that left Roe and Casey in place for now,” The Washington Post report said in reference to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case. “But the other conservatives were more interested in an opinion that overturned the precedents, the person said.”
In the past, Roberts has notably joined the leftist justices of the court in opposing laws that restore legal protections to the unborn. In June 2020, the chief justice was the deciding vote in a case striking down a Louisiana law “requiring that individuals who perform abortions at clinics have admitting privileges in a nearby hospital,” with the majority arguing that the law “place[d] an undue burden on women seeking abortions.”
Roberts also joined his fellow constitutionally illiterate colleagues last year in opposing Texas’ six-week abortion ban, with the chief justice laughably implying that women have a federal right to an abortion under the U.S. Constitution.
The Texas law “has had the effect of denying the exercise of what we have held is a right protected under the Federal Constitution,” Roberts wrote. The law’s “clear purpose and actual effect” has been “to nullify this Court’s rulings … The nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that is at stake.”
Roberts Continues to Play Politician
As if his faulty jurisprudence on the issue wasn’t bad enough, Roberts is also reportedly attempting to prevent the court from overturning Roe, with reports alleging that the chief justice is actively trying “to persuade Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh to take a more incremental approach to allowing abortion restrictions.”
Such actions are not unheard of for Roberts, who in 2012 attempted to convince Justice Anthony Kennedy to switch his position on the unconstitutionality of Obamacare to obtain the leftist corporate media’s approval of Supreme Court jurisprudence. After initially siding with his fellow Republican-appointed justices, Roberts cut a last-minute deal with the leftist justices to preserve the Affordable Care Act by falsely deeming the law’s individual mandate as a part of Congress’s taxing power.
“Roberts pays attention to media coverage. As chief justice, he is keenly aware of his leadership role on the court, and he also is sensitive to how the court is perceived by the public,” reported CBS News’ Jan Crawford in 2012. “There were countless news articles in May warning of damage to the court – and to Roberts’ reputation – if the court were to strike down the mandate … It was around this time that it also became clear to the conservative justices that Roberts was, as one put it, ‘wobbly.’”
Whether it’s the Obamacare decision or Dobbs, Roberts’ overtly political actions aren’t preserving the image of the court in the eyes of the American people; they’re destroying it. The primary responsibility of a judge is not to center judicial decisions on either the prejudices of the leftist press or the whims of the American public, whose opinions fluctuate on a regular basis, but to ignore such political noise and interpret the Constitution as written. Anything short of this is merely political gamesmanship.
Roberts’ bid to play politician is not only professionally grotesque, but it’s no different than what past justices have done in some of the most highly contentious SCOTUS cases in U.S. history. Just as the justices ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott v. Sanford allowed their personal views to obstruct proper jurisprudence and adherence to the Constitution, Roberts’ prioritization of his public image over his role as a judge is no different.
Source: The Federalist
