The Supreme Court hasn’t even officially ended federal protection of abortion rights for millions of Americans, but following the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion with four other justices signing on, no one is imagining that the forced birth contingent of the court will reconsider. It’s clear that Republican governors and legislatures believe it, as they rush to pass increasingly medieval laws to punish pregnant people.
Abortion rights advocates believe it too, and are fighting back in myriad ways. That includes addressing the problem at its heart: a Supreme Court majority drawn from and wholly captured by the fringe, extremist right. A group of abortion rights advocates from 11 states have joined with Take Back the Court to demand the majority Democratic House and Senate expand the Supreme Court.
Jamison Foser, a progressive strategist and adviser to Take Back the Court told, Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent at The Washington Post that the announcement reflects “a growing recognition of the need to rebalance the Supreme Court and disempower the court’s right-wing majority.”
Washington state Sen. Emily Randall and RuralOrganizing.org's Matt Hildreth talk about what they're seeing and hearing while knocking on doors this week on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast
“Without doing so, everything from abortion and voting rights to environmental protections is likely to be struck down,” Foser said. All of those things have already been whittled down to near-meaninglessness, so it’s not a stretch to see the next step as their annihilation. Once the legal premise for ending Roe that Alito is arguing and the extremists are agreeing to is handed down, the underpinnings for all the protections of our personal lives—marriage equality, family planning, access to housing, to jobs, to clean air and water—will be easily swept away.
Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY), a lead sponsor of the House expansion bill, participated in Thursday’s announcement from Take Back the Court and the advocate groups. He pointed out that these “six far-right justices, unrepresentative of and unaccountable to the American people will end legal abortions for millions.” He pointed out as well that “Black and brown women in particular will shoulder the burden of abortion bans across this country.”
That “unrepresentative of and unaccountable to” part is key here. It is key to the immediate public backlash across the nation and to a public that is ready to see the court become answerable to the majority of the people it’s making decisions for.
The immediate response in a Politico/Morning Consult poll showed a clear majority of voters—57%—want the court to support abortion rights and that 56% of voters believe abortion should be legal in “most” or “all cases.” Additionally, they want changes to the court: “66% strongly or somewhat approve of term limits for justices; 64% want to see an age cap for justices; 73% believe there should be a binding code of ethics for the court; 57% believe the court should be balanced with an equal number of Democrats, Republicans, and independents; and 57% support the idea of expanding the number of justices on the court.”
In the intervening weeks, that’s not changed. A Navigator Research poll released last Friday found that expanding the court was above water with voters for the first time since they began asking the question. A plurality of voters supported “adding more Justices to the Supreme Court beyond the current 9 seats,” 42% - 37%, with 21% uncertain. And as Kerry Eleveld wrote, that support “increased when overturning Roe and other rulings were included in the question.” In that case, the question got 46% support (a 4-point improvement), 37% opposition, with 17% unsure.
Sargent and Waldman point to a Quinnipiac University survey that was just released in which 63% of respondents “believe the Supreme Court is mainly motivated by politics,” as opposed to 32% who think it’s primarily acting in respect to law. A substantial 69% of those surveyed believe justices should be term limited.
Imagine what the public’s reaction will be when the court makes the decision final. It’s well past time for even a modicum of reform to the Supreme Court; as of now, it doesn’t even have to adhere to a code of ethics! It’s past time for that reform, and exactly the right time for the court to be expanded and for further reforms—like term limits—to be considered.
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