The Right to Life
Roe v. Wade, described as “the law of the land” and “settled law” by its supporters, is now unsettled and uprooted to the point of being overturned. After 49 years and 63 million abortions, the end of Roe is a great victory for pro-lifers, many of whom have worked tirelessly for decades to bring about an end to abortion in America.
But June’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned Roe, did not ban abortion. Prior to Roe, the states decided their own abortion laws, and with the overturning of Roe, states are doing so once again. Some states even enacted pre-Dobbs, anti-abortion “trigger laws” that automatically went into effect after the Dobbs decision was announced.
In actuality, those states did not need to wait until Roe was overturned, since Roe was never the “law of the land,” much less “settled law.” As Dobbs makes clear, there is no “right” to an abortion in the “penumbra” of the Constitution, the claim undergirding the 1973 Roe decision notwithstanding. Moreover, the Supreme Court cannot make law, since it is the judicial, not the legislative, branch of government. Roe was a huge unconstitutional usurpation of power, and the states could have — and should have — responded to the judicial overreach by nullifying Roe, declaring it null and void within their own state borders.
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