This week, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments in a blockbuster case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, that could lead to the overturning of the infamous Roe V. Wade decision of 1973 that permitted abortion.
Democrat Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), speaking at a virtual event on Monday featuring New Hampshire’s entire House and Senate delegation, condemned any attempt to overturn Roe, threatening that to do so would cause a “revolution.”
“This infringement on women’s rights, on our privacy, on the attempt to have state control of our personal health, really is what we would see in an authoritarian state,” she said pompously. “It’s not what we would expect in New Hampshire. I think if you want to see a revolution, go ahead, outlaw Roe v. Wade and see what the response is of the public, particularly young people. Because I think that will not be acceptable to young women or young men.”
.@SenatorShaheen on new abortion restrictions going into effect in N.H. & the upcoming Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case: "I think if you want to see a revolution, go ahead, outlaw Roe v. Wade and see what the response is…" #NHPolitics #WMUR pic.twitter.com/O7weoVuOSk
— Adam Sexton (@AdamSextonWMUR) November 29, 2021
Shaheen issued a statement in which she said, “I’ve lived the consequences of the pre-Roe era — I had friends in college who were forced to seek dangerous back alley abortions because women across the country were denied access to critical family planning services. We cannot allow Republican lawmakers to turn back the clock on women’s reproductive health and rights, which is precisely what the Mississippi case seeks to do. It is time to sound the alarm. Roe v. Wade isn’t just a decision that impacts women, their health and their financial security – it also impacts generations of families,” according to Fox News.
“In Dobbs, the court considers the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that limits abortions after 15 weeks of gestation with exceptions for health emergencies and fetal abnormalities,” Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, noted. “The statute conflicts with the court’s controlling abortion cases, Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which held that laws may not pose an undue burden on abortion prior to viability.”
“Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization challenges the constitutionality of a Mississippi statute that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, well before viability. The Supreme Court signaled that it will focus squarely on Roe’s ‘essential holding’ by agreeing to decide whether all bans on elective abortion before viability are unconstitutional,” The Heritage Foundation explains, adding:
Two features of the law are central to this litigation. First, it is a ban, rather than a regulation, on the performance of abortions. Second, this ban operates well before viability, which the Supreme Court established in Roe, and reaffirmed in Casey, is the “critical fact.” The Court might find it necessary, in the context of a constitutional challenge to such a pre-viability ban, to first determine whether viability, and therefore Roe’s “central principle” itself, remains legitimate.
On May 17, 2021, the Supreme Court announced they would grant certiorari to the case, although their review would only consider the question of whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional. “Since the Court, in both Roe and Casey, effectively answered this question in the affirmative, agreeing to revisit this question suggests that the Court will reconsider the basic validity of these precedents,” The Heritage Foundation noted.