Philosophy major Alena Alvarez-Saldivar interviewed Professor Ameila Wirts about the recent leak of the Supreme Court draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which would overturn the previous decision on abortion rights established by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Philosophy assistant professor Amelia Wirts was not surprised by the contents of the draft when she first learned about the leaked opinion because the December oral arguments in Dobbs already indicated this outcome.
“Anyone who is a court watcher, or [keeps] up to date with what's going on with the court … wasn’t necessarily surprised about the fact [that] this was going to be a chance to overturn Roe v. Wade,” Dr. Wirts said.
At the center of Dobbs is the state of Mississippi’s intentional violation of the Roe precedent with a statute banning abortions after 15 weeks. It is clear that Mississippi was intentionally testing Roe for a potential reversal in the Supreme Court.
For example, Justice Amy Coney Barrett was clear in describing that she followed the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s semantic textualist theory. Barrett did not believe that Roe was decided correctly.
“Once Justice Amy Coney Barrett was appointed, it was pretty clear that she was interested in challenging a lot of precedents, most especially Roe v. Wade, but also some of the other precedents that are related, like Obergefell v. Hodges, which grants the right to same-sex marriage, and Lawrence v. Texas, which made it unconstitutional to criminalize same-sex intercourse,” Dr. Wirts said. “All those cases come out of the same doctrine of privacy, so it seems likely that a lot of states are going to create laws that clearly violate precedents to test those precedents.”
Read the entire article on The Daily: “What happens if the leaked draft gets published, The ripple effect to come if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.”