ALLENTOWN, Pa. — The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Friday in Dobbs v. Jackson has put an end to the national right to abortion established nearly 50 years ago under Roe. v. Wade, and reaction in Pennsylvania was swift.
“It is unjust. It is wrong. And I’m going to fight it with everything I’ve got,” Lt. Gov. John Fetterman tweeted, vowing to fight for abortion rights if he is elected to the Senate.
“Guns should not have more rights than women in America,” Sen. Bob Casey tweeted, referring to the court’s overturning of a New York law that restricted the right to carry firearms.
“And make no mistake,” Casey added in a statement. “This is not the end goal, it’s just the beginning. Republicans in Congress want to pass federal legislation to completely ban abortion. Our daughters and granddaughters should not grow up with fewer rights than their mothers.”
Michael McGonagle, president of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Coalition, welcomed the ruling “as a necessary step toward achieving our mission, which is to have every child in Pennsylvania welcome in life and protected by law.” Roe v. Wade, he added, “has proven to be a deadly and unjust distortion of our nation’s constitution.”
The court’s ruling leaves the decision on abortion rights up to individual states, more than half of which are set or expected to ban abortion.
The essence of the lengthy opinion: “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
“It’s a dark day for reproductive rights in America,” Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf said in a statement. “But I want every Pennsylvanian to know abortion services are available and unharmed by today’s ruling. To women and pregnant people in surrounding states and across the country where this isn’t the case: You are safe here.”
Bishop Alfred Schlert of the Catholic Diocese of Allentown said commended the justices “for their courageous willingness to reexamine the right to terminate a life.”
“We are reminded that since God is the author of all life, all human life must be protected and respected at every stage, especially the most defenseless,” Schlert said.
The authors of the dissent, justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, blasted the ruling as a curtailment of women’s rights “and of their status as free and equal citizens.”
Pennsylvania is not one of the 13 states with a trigger ban in place so abortion rights were unchanged by the Supreme Court’s decision. But anti-abortion activists and politicians are working set limits, including a constitutional amendment that would establish there is no right to abortion in the state. If that amendment passes the state Legislature in two separate sessions it would go before voters.
Another bill under consideration in Harrisburg would impose a six-week ban similar to one that passed last year in Texas, according to Melissa Reed, CEO of Planned Parenthood Keystone.
“This decision will strip millions of people across the nation of the right to control their bodies and gives anti-abortion lawmakers free rein to interfere in personal health care decisions,” that organization said in a statement.
Maria Gallagher, legislative director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation — the state chapter of National Right to Life — said the decision represents “a day of victory for the most vulnerable among us.
“We commend the High Court for recognizing the truth that a so-called ‘right’ to abortion appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution,” Gallagher said in a statement.
While Wolf has said abortion rights are safe while he is governor, this is his last term. The two gubernatorial candidates stand on opposite sides of the issue.
Democratic candidate Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s website states “he will veto any bill that would restrict abortion rights, and he will expand access to reproductive care.” As a state senator, Republican candidate Doug Mastriano sponsored legislation that would limit abortion, including a heartbeat bill, and has compared abortion to genocide.
The Supreme Court’s ruling came in a lawsuit brought by Jackson Women’s Health Organization against Mississippi state health officials because of the state’s Gestational Age Act passed in 2018, which bans all abortions over 15 weeks gestational age except in medical emergencies and in the case of severe fetal abnormality. Lower courts had ruled against Mississippi but the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear the state’s appeal.
The court, which became more conservative when Justice Amy Coney Barrett replaced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in late 2020, decided to use the case to completely overturn the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which said the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects the right to an abortion.
It also overturns the 1992 decision by the court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, stemming from a Pennsylvania law that required informed consent and a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion, among other restrictions. That decision upheld Roe, but created a standard that made it easier to pass laws restricting abortion so long as courts found those laws did not pose an “undue burden” to the mother.
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