Attorney General Lynn Fitch issued the following statement.
Today, in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed her brief with the Supreme Court of the United States, defending the right of the people to pass laws that protect life and women’s health and address legitimate interests of the State.
“There are those who would like to believe that Roe v. Wade settled the issue of abortion once and for all,” said Attorney General Fitch. “But all it did was establish a special-rules regime for abortion jurisprudence that has left these cases out of step with other Court decisions and neutral principles of law applied by the Court. As a result, state legislatures, and the people they represent, have lacked clarity in passing laws to protect legitimate public interests, and
artificial guideposts have stunted important public debate on how we, as a society, care for the dignity of women and their children. It is time for the Court to set this right and return this political debate to the political branches of government.”
As noted in the brief, rather than settle the discord established by Roe, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey made matters worse. “Casey recognized that Roe’s disregard for state interests had to be abandoned…. Casey tried to improve upon Roe by replacing strict scrutiny with the undue-burden standard. But that standard too defeats important state interests rather than accounts for them.”
The brief continues, “The only workable approach to accommodating the competing interests here is to return the matter to ‘legislators, not judges.’...The national fever on abortion can break only when this Court returns abortion policy to the states – where agreement is more common, compromise is more possible, and disagreement can be resolved at the ballot box.”
“With this brief, we’re simply asking the Court to affirm the right of the people to protect their legitimate interests and to provide clarity on how they may do so,” said Fitch.
In the nearly 50 years since Roe, science and society have marched forward. During this time, the viability marker has moved from 28 weeks to 22 weeks in some cases, and science will only continue to advance.
“Legislatures should be able to respond to those advances, which they cannot do in the face of flawed precedents that are anchored to decades-stale views of life and health,” the brief reasons.
The Attorney General asks the Court to consider the policy and cultural shifts that have occurred in the 30-50 years since Roe and Casey and argues that the precedent set in these cases, “shackle states to a view of facts that is decades out of date.”
The brief counters Casey, stating, “Many laws (largely post-dating Roe) protect equal opportunity—including prohibitions on sex and pregnancy discrimination in employment, guarantees of employment leave for pregnancy and birth, and support to offset the costs of childcare for working mothers…. Casey gives no good reason to believe that decades of advances for women rest on Roe, and evidence is to the contrary.”
“A lot has changed in five decades,” continued Fitch. “In 1973, there was little support for women who wanted a full family life and a successful career. Maternity leave was rare. Paternity leave was unheard of. The gold standard for professional success was a 9-to-5 with a corner office. The flexibility of the gig economy was a fairy tale. In these last fifty years, women have carved their own way to achieving a better balance for success in their professional and personal lives. By returning the matter of abortion policy to state legislatures, we allow a stunted debate on how we support women to flourish. It is time for the Court to let go of its hold on this important debate.”
National Review editorialized on the Attorney General's brief:
Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, which ignored text, structure, history — ignored the Constitution nearly completely — to pretend that abortion requires the federal courts to extend it special protection. Fitch and her colleagues explain patiently and thoroughly why those obstacles should be removed. The decisions were “egregiously wrong.” They have inflicted harm to self-government. They have not resulted in the stable consensus the Court has repeatedly sought and predicted. They have rested on premises about the reliability of contraception, the career prospects of women, and the state of medicine that no longer apply if they ever did. These outdated premises are at the heart of the Court’s previous findings about women’s “reliance” on constitutionalized abortion rights.
And they have proven incapable of generating a predictable body of law. The brief notes that just last year, the five justices who agreed to strike down an abortion regulation could not agree on the basis for doing it, and the five justices who agreed on what Casey meant did not reach the same judgment in the case. The justices’ inability to devise a predictable set of rules that protects abortion from legislatures, gives them some leeway to set policy, and has some plausible grounding in the Constitution does not stem from any lack of cleverness on their part. The thing cannot be done.
When the Court handed down Casey in 1992, it tacitly conceded many of the faults of Roe while insisting that the need to preserve public respect for itself as an institution required it to stick with the pretense that the Constitution protects abortion. Fitch gently but firmly observes that after nearly 30 years, this judgment has proven spectacularly wrong. It is the Court’s extraconstitutional role in setting abortion policy, more than anything else, that has diminished and distorted it. Rest of editorial.
20 comments:
Devote some of this energy into WHY Holmes CC is teaching CRT !!!! The abortion fight.....Roe V Wade was set in stone decades ago and will not be changed. Right now we got a bigger issue. Paying students being forced to write papers on their white priviledge needs to be stopped now !! Wake the hell up.
If they really wanted to decrease abortions, they would offer free birth control. The fact that they won’t even consider this tells me how untrustworthy their motivations really are. Every first world country thinks abortions should be necessary and legal. The same people that think the vaccine makes you magnetic and that democrats are drinking babies blood shouldn’t be the ones to make this the only nation without those protections for women.
dear ms fitch,
rather than continuing to beat a dead horse , why dont you attempt to dismantle the monopoly that blue cross has over health insurance coverage in mississippi?
@11:02am - I’m guessing that has something to do with all their campaign contributions to her over the years, but what do I know.
@11:36 - it could also be attributed to general incompetence and laziness. She is so bad it’s hard to even imagine she has a plan. She is much like Trump in her superhuman ability to claim ignorance on almost any subject.
I am not a proponent of abortion, but I do believe a woman should have a choice. With that being said, for any woman that wants an abortion, but is denied due to anti-abortion legislation, the baby should be given to the anti-abortion politicians to raise themselves. They have to take a minimum 5 each of such children. These children cannot be given up for adoption either. The politicians will also be responsible for the cost of the delivery of said children.
I still do not understand why we free contraception and real sex education are not things in our society! With the proliferation of internet filth, I only foresee more unwanted pregnancies, not to mention STD's, as kids are given a false reality of the consequences of sex.
So many criticisms of Fitch. She is fair game, because she is an elected official. But to criticize her for defending MS law is ridiculous. That is her job, whether you agree with the law or not.
RMQ
Fitch and Reeves are hypocrites. The government does not have the right to require people to wear a mask or to get a vaccine to protect themselves and others. Yet the government does have the right to tell a raped teenage girl that she is required to give birth. They make me sick.
Sickening waste of taxpayer's dollars. Nothing more than pandering to superstitious bible thumpers and political virtue signaling. The pro fifers aren't pro life. They are pro pregnancy. They don't give a rat's ass about the kid once it's born.
Women, with exception of a crime being committed against them, have a choice… have unprotected sex or not. It takes the decision of two to make a baby… fact. She didn’t make it on her own, the decision isn’t hers alone. The logic her body her choice works the same the other way so…Men should have a choice of their money…to pay child support or not
As for the AG…. Just waiting to see who else I can vote for next election
@4:13
You are funny. Modern feminism dictates that men have consequences and responsibilities, women do not. Women are allowed a lifetime of mistakes in the endless persuit to “find themselves”
@4:05
Yup, pandering was the exact word that came to mind. Also... unintended consequences. If SCOTUS desires, Mississippi's 15 week law could be struck down.
Freedom to choose a medical procedure?
If abortion is made illegal, Covid-19 vaccines should be mandatory.
Both save lives.
Pro-lifers claim they want to protect the innocent unborn but they allow abortions for rape victims. The product of a rape is as innocent as the product of consensual sex so obviously protecting fetuses is not really what they want.
Lynn Fitch has never had an original thought in her life. She is way over her head and incompetent at her job.
Wow, thanks for spitting in the face of the women who supported you, Lynn
Wonder who wrote that for her signature. Probably got a lawyer to write it. Ahem!
Heard a blurb from her on the radio yesterday. It started with, "As the states chief legal officer..." Dayum, how depressing.
Ah, 8:35 - Whose life does abortion save?
Well, not get into the abortion debate, but Lynn caused the first of two meltdowns on one of the Saturday morning MSNBC shows today.
The second meltdown was all about Megyn Kelly's criticism of American athletes that hate the USA.
I'm really not a big fan of Fitch or Kelly, but if those two ladies can upset MSNBC ... I love em'.
"They don't give a rat's ass about the kid once it's born."
So what? Does being pro-life require that one care about certain things other than pro-life.
I'm pro prison and all in for building more. But, I don't give a rat's ass about a prisoner, once released. Your argument is like an aborted fetus. DOA.
Abortion morality/legal standing is not complicated:
1. one either supports an all encompassing constitutional right to life,
or...
2. in opposition to an inherent constitutional right to life, one prefers killing of unborn/recently born human life at the will of the mother and at the will of the state, generally for the convenience of both.
Abortion is a hideous sacrifice of life, often to relieve the mother of a 22 year responsibility stemming from 20 minutes of lust, to enable PPhood profitable abortion procedures and access to marketable organs and enable politicians access to PPhood contributions.
We need a way to ensure the fathers of these infants take 50% of the financial responsibility for creating a child, rather than justify abortion, in some cases, just because the father doesn't also bear the consequences of sharing equally in an impulsive action.
When those of you among the elite Republican leadership circle convene at plated dinners to pass out accolades to and for Haley Barbour, please remember that he is solely responsible for the political rise of Phil Bryant, Tate Reeves and Lynn Fitch - A deputy sheriff, a bank teller and a red dress.
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