Blog post 3
In the last few weeks, there has been major controversy over the Supreme Court’s ruling to overrule Roe v Wade. Roe v Wade was originally ruled in 1973 and said that it was a person’s individual right to be able to get an abortion and that it was constituitionally protected by the 14th amendment and the right to privacy. However, the Supreme Court has now reversed this decision, paving the way for state and local governments to have the ability to determine if abortion is legal or not. This has led to millions of women in red states to have lost the right to have abortions except in extreme circumstances. Additionally, there as been public outcry from all over the country of this historic, precedent breaking ruling. This ruling has reversed the 1973 decision and has been one of the rare cases where precedent has been reversed. In my community of Hoover, the state government’s laws on abortion are starting to go into effect. Alabama’s laws include outlawing all abortions except for those which endanger the life of the mother. Those who continue to provide abortion services face extreme penalties including jail time. With this in effect, local prosecutors will each be responsible for the enforcing of these laws. An article from ABC says that more than a third of district attorneys representing the 25 most populous counties in states that have banned or are about to ban abortion, have already publicly said they will not prosecute doctors that continue giving abortions. These claims have led to the growing concern of legal issues involving liberal prosecutors in red states. While prosecutors do have the ability to decide and prioritize certain cases, this could lead to them getting voted out of office or a reform in who the state legislature seems responsible for these cases. This delaying of abortion cases could also trigger states to roll out new legislature to better enforce these cases. Many claim that these prosecutors were not elected to decide what the law is or isn’t and that if they are lacking the ability to enforce the law then the people will find someone else to do it. A Texas representative has recently said that he plans to introduce a bill that will allow legislature to let district attorneys from neighboring counties to file charges if another district attorney declines to prosecute an abortion case. This phenomenon of the new legal issues surrounding this ruling will surely affect those in my community. First, there will likely be some hesitancy from doctors of what is considered a legal abortion and what is illegal. For example, in certain cases the doctor may be hesitant to act on a woman with a potentially life threatening pregnancy and this could lead to women in my community being harmed or dying. Until the lines of what is clearly a case of abortion that is legal and whether or not doctors will be prosecuted or not for certain things, there will likely be issues with how women are able to receive proper care in life threatening instances. For women in my community this obviously will have a serious impact on if they are able to have their rights protected and is a very serious issue to keep an eye on. In addition, for the community these issues may highlight an even larger national problem of the lack of legitimacy of the Supreme Court. With prosecutors openly saying they won’t take abortion cases and women and doctors in fear of repercussions from not knowing what is ok and what is not, this has only further added to the national decline in respect of the Supreme Court. Many have started to doubt their legitimacy and their ability to enforce laws and this could lead to reform of our judicial branch. There’s been many instances where the court has made decisions which have been against public opinion, and as they are the only form of branch in which the people have no direct say of who is on it, it is plausible that we could see drastic change soon. Potentially judges could start seeing term limits and elections for their positions, as opposed to appointment by the executive branch. Other radical changes we could see could be age limits, or making the court itself larger and introducing more justices. This national issue of abortion has led more people to begin calling for a change to this branch of government and with more historic rulings potentially on the way from the court, a drastic change occurring soon would not be entirely surprising