Despite public opinion on abortion remaining essentially unchanged over the past 40 years, with the opinion that abortion should be illegal under any circumstances consistently being the minority view, that minority of mobilized constituents has been effectively chipping away at women’s legal rights. These effects have been particularly noticeable and reported on in the South — Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama — but in reality, this a nation-wide phenomenon. Some 300 restrictive acts, policies, and laws have been enacted around the country in the past five years alone. It has been troubling in and of itself for those who believe in a woman’s right to choose. And troubling, moreover, for anyone who believes in upholding our law and institutional processes, and anyone who believes in scientific reason.
Fortunately, this week the Supreme Court, in a consecutive and somewhat surprising sweep of liberal rulings, struck down abortion restrictions in Texas, a decision that explicitly reinforced constitutional law, and made clear that bogus medical scientific claims were illegitimate, and exposed as such. The decision is reverberating across other states, as well: “There is no good faith argument that Alabama’s law remains constitutional in light of the Supreme Court ruling,” Mr. Strange, Alabama’s Attorney General, said in a statement.