Many conservative state legislators cheered Friday when the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion that an earlier court had affirmed in Roe v. Wade in 1973.
The 6-3 majority also overturned the 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, under which the justices at that time further affirmed the abortion right but found that there is a legitimate public interest in regulating abortion.
Pennsylvania is not among the 13 states that immediately will outlaw and, in some cases, criminalize, abortion within the next 30 days. But there is no doubt that some Pennsylvania lawmakers will move that quickly to introduce such measures.
In doing so, they will answer the question raised by Gov. Robert P. Casey when he crafted the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act, the law that led to the Supreme Court decision in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.
Casey was condemned from the left of his own Democratic Party due to the law’s restrictions on abortion, and from the right, which wanted him to push a law that would lead to a direct challenge of Roe at the Supreme Court.
Though Democrats to his left viewed Casey as a conservative, he argued that eliminating abortion should be an aspect of progressive social policy.
He argued that abortion policy and expansive family-sustaining social policies regarding health care access, education, affordable day care, livable wages and similar policies were of one piece. Asked at a press conference during the 1992 Democratic National Convention why he did not just become a Republican due to the abortion issue, he replied that he and Republicans “parted company at birth.”
Here in Pennsylvania — the land of corporate tax cuts and gas industry subsidies, the $7.25 hourly minimum wage and woefully underfunded public schools in poor communities — the question for GOP legislative majorities is if, 30 years later, they still part company with Casey at birth.
Tragically, the answer to that is just as predictable as this conservative court supermajority’s decision to overturn what two of its members, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, had assured Sens. Susan Collins and Joe Manchin was “settled law” as they sought confirmation of their appointments.
— The Citizens’ Voice, Wilkes-Barre via TNS
