Chief Justice John Roberts’ Own Opinion Makes It Clear: No Right to Abortion in the Constitution
March 6, 2022 | District of Columbia
During oral argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization – about Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban – Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts’s questions indicated that he was searching for a way to uphold Mississippi’s law while leaving Roe v. Wade intact. But Roberts has already penned the most convincing argument for overturning Roe, in his dissenting opinion in the Court’s same-sex marriage case.
In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Court held that the due process clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment – the same clause on which Roe relied – contains a right of same-sex marriage. Justice Roberts wrote a blistering dissent, ending with the memorable lines: “If you are among the many Americans . . . who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision. . . . But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.”
The bulk of Roberts’s dissent was a primer for the Court about how its precedents structure a due process inquiry: The clause forbids deprivations of “liberty” without due process, but leaves it to the Court to name the particular liberties protected. Quoting an earlier case, Roberts cautioned his colleagues that “substantive due process” analysis is the “most sensitive category of constitutional adjudication” rendering the Court “most vulnerable and . . . nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or even the design of the Constitution.” He underscored just how wrong the Court’s “own conception of liberty” had proved in the past, citing the Dred Scott decision upholding the rights of slaveholders…. (Excerpt from LIFENEWS.COM)
