One Giant Step Back

Last week, the Supreme Court upheld congress’s 2003 law “The partial birth abortion ban” act, by a 5-4 ruling. The Justice writing the decision, Anthony Kennedy, claimed that the law does not violate a woman’s right to choose. However, women’s groups, women in government and feminists everywhere are appalled by the decision. They are worried about its ramifications and what this could open the door to. As California senator, Dianne Feinstein, said “the court has taken the first major step back”.

The most troubling fact of last week’s decision was that Kennedy passed the deciding vote against abortion rights. The Supreme Court is currently in a deadlock between the four pro-choice justices (Stevens, Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg) and anti-choice justices (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito). Kennedy, who has voted liberally on social issues before, will be the crucial figure in deciding which way the court goes on future abortion cases.

If more restrictions on abortion were to be implemented, it is quite possible that abortion rights will be put into the hands of the individual state. This is what Scalia and the other pro-life justices want because they do not believe the right to an abortion is in the Constitution to begin with. That thought should be troubling for most women because it would be turning the reproductive rights clock back to the mid 1900s, and we do not want to imagine the implications of that.