Next week, on Wednesday, March 4, the Supreme Court will hear an abortion case challenging a Louisiana law that requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of where the abortion is performed. If you're a court or abortion-rights watcher, you might be thinking, Hey, didn't the Supreme Court already deal with that fairly recently? Yes, in fact, it did. In 2016 in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, a 5-3 majority said that a similar Texas law was unconstitutional, ruling that the requirement did nothing to protect the health of the woman in question, but did make it much harder for her to get an abortion—it constitutes an "undue burden." So why now? Let's ask Sen. Susan Collins.
Let's make sure her time is up. Please give $1 to help Democrats in each of these crucial Senate races, but especially the one in Maine!
Shouldn't stare decisis, which Merriam-Webster defines as the "doctrine or policy of following rules or principles laid down in previous judicial decisions unless they contravene the ordinary principles of justice," apply here? you might ask. After all, it was just four years ago that the court decided this case. What changed was the addition of two justices put on the bench by Donald Trump and approved by the Republican Senate—specifically with the votes of Susan Collins. But didn't both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh promise her that the right to an abortion was settled law? Sure they did, and sure she believed them.
Once again, Collins has put the nation's women in the position of having to pin our futures on the very thin reed of Chief Justice John Roberts and his unwillingness to push that boat out in an election year. That's not good. At all.
We're that much closer to a Supreme Court that will make Roe a protection of women's rights in name only—it is on the cusp of allowing the actual ability of a woman to obtain an abortion to end in huge swaths of the country. And that's on Susan Collins.
