'With Sorrow, We Dissent': The Three Justices Who Rejected Dobbs

‘With Sorrow, We Dissent’: The Three Justices Who Rejected Dobbs
7/5/2022 by Stephen Rohde


The dissent in Dobbs v. Jackson blasts the conservative justices for overruling Roe and Casey “for one and only one reason: because [they have] always despised them, and now [have] the votes to discard them.”


For the first time in American history, the Supreme Court has rescinded a constitutional right and conferred it on the states where it may be regulated, abolished and criminalized. (Stefani Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images)

In one of the most important dissenting opinions in Supreme Court history, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan systematically refuted the arrogant, cruel and legally unsound majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eliminating a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. The masterful 60-page dissent, with extensive legal citations, deserves to be read by everyone who cares about the future of the United States’ constitutional democracy. For the first time in American history, the conservative majority has rescinded a constitutional right and conferred it on the states where it may be regulated, abolished and criminalized.

For half a century, Roe v. Wade and later, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, “have protected the liberty and equality of women,” Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan wrote.
“Roe held, and Casey reaffirmed, that in the first stages of pregnancy, the government could not make that choice for women. The government could not control a woman’s body or the course of a woman’s life. It could not determine what the woman’s future would be. Respecting a woman as an autonomous being, and granting her full equality, meant giving her substantial choice over this most personal and most consequential of all life decisions.”

The three justices framed the majority opinion of Dobbs as a devastating blow to human rights:

“[The majority] says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs. Under those laws, a woman will have to bear her rapist’s child or a young girl her father’s—no matter if doing so will destroy her life.”
. . . .

Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan also warned that “no language in today’s decision stops the Federal Government from prohibiting abortions nationwide, once again from the moment of conception and without exceptions for rape or incest.” The dissent is blunt. “The Court reverses course today for one reason and one reason only: because the composition of this Court has changed,” the three justices wrote. “Stare decisis, this Court has often said, ‘contributes to the actual and perceived integrity of the judicial process’ by ensuring that decisions are ‘founded in the law rather than in the proclivities of individuals.’… Today, the proclivities of individuals rule. The Court departs from its obligation to faithfully and impartially apply the law. We dissent.”

. . . .



Three courageous and compassionate justices have done their part. Now we have to do ours.


https://msmagazine.com/2022/07/05/dobbs-v-jackson-dissent-breyer-sotomayor-kagan-opinion-roe-v-wade/