Jurisprudence should be reevaluated, he says.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas filed a dissent from a decision on Monday to block a Louisiana law that required doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. He called the high court’s record on abortion is “grievously wrong.”
His dissent made clear that Justice Thomas believes it is the Court’s responsibility to reevaluate existing precedents. As law and culture changes, and as new facts come to light, his comments indicate that he believes previous opinions of the Court regarding abortion should be also reconsidered.
“The plurality and [Chief Justice John Roberts] ultimately cast aside this jurisdictional barrier to conclude that Louisiana’s law is unconstitutional under our precedents,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote. “But those decisions created the right to abortion out of whole cloth, without a shred of support from the Constitution’s text. Our abortion precedents are grievously wrong and should be overruled.”
He added, lower in the opinion: “The plurality and [Roberts’] claim that the Court’s judgment is dictated by ‘our precedents,’ particularly Whole Woman’s Health… For the detailed reasons explained by [Alito], this is not true… But today’s decision is wrong for a far simpler reason: The Constitution does not constrain the States’ ability to regulate or even prohibit abortion. This Court created the right to abortion based on an amorphous, unwritten right to privacy, which it grounded in the ‘legal fiction’ of substantive due process.”
Thomas further called Roe v. Wade “farcical,” said the Supreme Court’s “abortion jurisprudence remains in a state of utter entropy,” and said the court “can reconcile neither Roe nor its progeny with the text of our Constitution,” so “those decisions should be overruled.”
Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch all sided with Thomas in saying that the Louisiana law, which required doctors performing abortions to obtain admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, should be allowed to stand.
Justice Thomas has now been on the Supreme Court bench longer than any other sitting justice.
As the Lord Leads, Pray with Us…
- For Associate Justice Clarence Thomas and the decidedly strong stand he has taken in favor of the Constitution and the rights of the unborn.
- For the court’s ability to discern fundamental rights that warrant protection from what is not fundamental.
- For Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and their courage to stand against abortion activists.
Sources: SCOTUSBlog, Fox News
