In June 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel Alito declared for the majority, “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
But other members of that majority were quick to downplay concerns about the decision’s impact on other constitutional rights directly concerning family and sexuality or even on other constitutional rights incidentally related to abortion access.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for example, in his separate concurring opinion, reflected:
As I see it, some of the other abortion-related legal questions raised by today’s decision are not especially difficult as a constitutional matter. For example, may a State bar a resident of that State from traveling to another State to obtain an abortion? In my view, the answer is no based on the constitutional right to interstate travel.
In the nine-plus months since the court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, there’s no question that the people, and not courts, now largely control abortion law.
On one hand, within six months of the Dobbs decision, 24 states had either banned abortion or were likely to do so. On the other hand, Kansas voters wholeheartedly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have, contrary to a Kansas Supreme Court ruling, expressly said the state constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion. And soon after, echoes of Kansas were felt in Michigan, Vermont and California, where voters “enshrined abortion rights” in each of those states’ constitutions.
The rock bottom of Idaho’s war against women is the law signed by Idaho Gov. Brad Little on Wednesday.
Idaho, however, is not like uber-liberal California or Vermont, nor has it yet faced the swift backlash against Dobbs felt in more moderate Kansas or Michigan. Instead, Idaho lawmakers not only have gone all in on banning abortion within state lines but also have doubled down to cut off women and…
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