Word: roe
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Since the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision striking down laws prohibiting abortion, almost 20 million pregnancies have been terminated in the U.S. Robert Bork believes that ruling is without foundation. His opinion chills women's groups and cheers right-to-life supporters, who expect Bork to become part of a new court majority that will overturn Roe. That outcome, however, is far from certain...
Bork's position on the law is unequivocal. "Roe v. Wade," he asserted to Congress in 1981, "is itself an unconstitutional decision, a serious and wholly unjustifiable judicial usurpation of state legislative authority." He does not believe the Constitution guarantees the right to privacy, the guiding principle underlying Roe...
Still, Bork has never said outright that he would strike down Roe, and of late he has even paid lip service to the judicial principle that it is better to leave certain long-settled decisions in effect if reversing them would create chaos. Bork has never declared that abortion is morally wrong, and in 1981 he testified in Congress against the "human life" bill that would have defined life as beginning at conception. Says John Willke, president of the National Right to Life Committee: "We're not sure Bork is against abortion. In our circles, there is substantial doubt that...
...would Justice Bork necessarily become the bellwether of an anti-Roe majority. The court still includes four staunch supporters of Roe: Harry Blackmun, the author of the decision, plus Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan and John Paul Stevens. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Byron White both dissented from Roe and would probably vote against it again. Antonin Scalia is thought to be against abortion. Bork would make four firmly against. But Sandra Day O'Connor is a question mark, and may become the swing vote in any majority. While O'Connor believes the court has gone too far in preventing states...
...hear any cases that deal with outright prohibitions against abortion. "What they're going to have," says UCLA Law Professor Julian Eule, "is cases that deal with a variety of obstacles to abortion that the states have constructed. Therefore, what the court would do, rather than say, 'We abandon Roe v. Wade,' is to allow increasing leeway to states to regulate the parameters of the right to an abortion." More regulation would undoubtedly mean fewer abortions...