Republican leaders are lauding the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion at a national level, while Democrats are decrying what they call the revocation of women’s rights.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who played a role in preserving the seat left vacant by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and paving the way for a Republican-appointed conservative majority, said Friday’s ruling is a “historic victory.”
“The Court has corrected a terrible legal and moral error, like when Brown v. Board overruled Plessy v. Ferguson,” McConnell wrote in a statement, referencing the 1954 decision that effectively ended racial segregation in public schools.
“The Justices applied the Constitution. They carefully weighed the complex factors regarding precedent. The Court overturned mistaken rulings that even liberals have long admitted were incoherent, restoring the separation of powers,” he continued. “I commend the Court for its impartiality in the face of attempted intimidation.”
Sen Mike Lee (R-Utah), who clerked for Justice Samuel Alito in the late 1990s, said that Roe v. Wade belongs to the “anticanon of Supreme Court history” alongside infamous decisions such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott v. Sandford, which denied citizenship to descendants of liberated slaves.
“I have never been prouder to have clerked for Justice Alito or the Supreme Court of the United States. I pray for national unity and for the safety of justices of the Supreme Court who, in regard to this case, have faced unprecedented attacks,” Lee said, pointing to recent threats of violence from pro-abortion activists. “I thank God that the people of Utah and the United States are now free to enact protections for life and human dignity.”
A number of Republican-led states have moved to ban abortions in the wake of the decision. That includes 13 states that have “trigger bans,” as well as some other states where anti-abortion laws have been blocked by the courts.
The states with “trigger bans,” which are designed to automatically take effect as soon as Roe no longer applies, are Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.
Meanwhile, Democrats are venting their frustration, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) saying at her press conference that there was “no point in saying ‘Good morning,’ because it certainly is not one.”
“Today, the Republican-controlled Supreme Court has achieved the GOP’s dark and extreme goal of ripping away women’s right to make their own reproductive health decisions,” Pelosi said. “Because of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Party and their supermajority on the Supreme Court, American women today have less freedom than their mothers.”
Pelosi also made unsubstantiated claims about what the ruling means for other issues related to pregnancy. “GOP extremists are even threatening to criminalize contraception, as well as in-vitro fertilization and post-miscarriage care,” she said, although the justices explicitly said in the majority opinion that this will not undo cases on contraception.
“This decision: illegitimate!” Ocasio-Cortez yelled into a megaphone apparently held by Sunsara Taylor, a vocal pro-abortion activist known for her affiliation with radical Maoist group Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.
Police units in Washington were on high alert as crowds continued to grow on Friday.
U.S. Capitol Police also said they were calling in backup forces and are working with other law-enforcement agencies in preparation for potential unrest, amid threats from leftist activist groups to take to the streets in a “night of rage.”
