News
June 24, 2022

WNBA Reacts to Supreme Court Overturning Roe V. Wade

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to reverse the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that said a woman’s right to abortion was a Constitutional right. The court’s conservative majority said otherwise, declaring that the Constitution didn’t protect a woman’s reproductive rights and ruled that states may outlaw abortion.

The opinion written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. closely tracks a draft that Politico leaked in May.

“We hold that Roe and [the 1992 Planned Parenthood vs.] Casey must be overruled,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote per The New York Times. “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.”

The opinion was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. concurred but did not join the majority opinion in overturning Roe, saying he would have upheld only a Mississippi 15-week ban on abortion saying that “the court’s decision to overrule Roe and Casey is a serious jolt to the legal system.

The court’s liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented.

“Today, the court … says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of,” their dissent read. “A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs.”

“Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws, one result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights and of their status as free and equal citizens.”

WNBA franchises and players have begun to react in the wake of the court’s historic reversal.

Trending
You might also like