Keywords
Right to Health
Supreme Court Decisions
Jurisprudence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17566/ciads.v12i1.998How to Cite
Abstract
This article explores the last bastion of slavery in the USA – motherhood – as circumscribed by two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases about abortion: Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) and the case it overruled, Roe v. Wade (1973). These two cases bookend a half century fraught with controversy that began when Roe v. Wade allowed pregnant patients to decide whether they want a legal abortion under USA law. The contrary opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson allowing individual states of the USA to prohibit abortion in the same time frame in which Roe v. Wade allowed patients to have an abortion (and explicitly overruling Roe v. Wade) exploded when a draft opinion was released across international social media – igniting protests at the gates of judges homes and during off duty activities such as eating in a restaurant. Beyond the implications of this unprecedented response towards legitimate juridical pronouncements in a democracy that prides itself on protecting free speech, the billions of dollars spent lobbying around abortion laws and the small number of pregnancies involved annually suggests that these cases are about unspoken issues that do not surface in the Supreme Court. This article therefore explores the notion that the public uproar about abortion masks the societal need for several important conversations that have not occurred. Under this view, close examination of cases that mark the beginning and end of U.S. Supreme Court case law regarding abortion posits a distraction from unresolved fundamental problems about public health. Achieving the goal of developing rational legislation that clarifies these issues to move towards resolution requires however a Constitutional base that presently does not exist in USA law. Therefore, this article proposes a U.S. Constitutional Amendment protecting the right to health that would provide a strong foundation for case law regarding medical decisions ostensibly protected by the abortion case law.
Invited article
References
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