Roe Undermines the Supreme Court’s Legitimacy

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the state of Mississippi has directly confronted the Supreme Court with an argument that, believe it or not, no state has pressed since Pennsylvania did so 29 years ago in Planned Parenthood v. Casey — that Roe v. Wade was a grievous constitutional error and should be overturned.

Casey was a close-run thing, a 5–4 decision that both preserved a virtually unlimited “right” to abortion and exposed how nakedly political and lawless was the “jurisprudence” that shielded the abortion license from democratic accountability.