Dothan Eagle. June 25, 2022.
Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling dismantling precedents set by the landmark Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey didn’t come out of the blue. A leaked draft of an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito last month telegraphed the high court’s intent. Even before the leak, it was almost universally assumed that the end of Roe was just a matter of time.
The high court’s action sends the abortion question back to the state level, where several states, including Alabama, have already enacted laws that would all but outright ban abortion. Alabama’s “Human Life Protection Act,” passed in 2019 exclusively by the state Legislature’s Republican majority, defines all unborn children as persons and bans all abortion at any stage of pregnancy. The law also creates a felony charge equivalent to rape or murder for doctors who perform abortion. The law was stayed by U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson in 2019; Thompson lifted the stay later in the day Friday.
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Whether one agrees or not with the court’s action or the logic and rationale behind it, this is the procedure under our form of government. There is nothing improper about the way this change unfolded. Five decades have passed since the landmark Roe v. Wade became law; in another half-century, law relating to abortion may well change again.
In the coming weeks and months, there will surely be much debate about what the ruling means today and what it may mean in the future. There will be discussions about what other landmark cases may be challenged.
From the Alabama Capitol, there will undoubtedly be an appeal to federal Judge Thompson to release the state’s Human Life Protection Act to allow its provisions to go into effect.
We urge lawmakers to take the next logical step and address other related crises in our state, such as our infant mortality rate and other public health challenges, poverty, and the failure to expand Medicaid to provide health coverage to tens of thousands of Alabamians who currently have no medical insurance coverage.
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