A Real Shame During Dobbs' case The Supreme Court Didn't Have A Sandra Day O'Connor To Protect It Fr

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor died yesterday, December 1, 2023. She was an outstanding American for many reasons but what warrants her being constantly remembered and held out as the greatest of role models as a citizen is for her efforts to preserve the role of the Supreme Court in American society as a stable final interpreter of America's laws. Our nation's founders utilized the wisest of designs in designing the Supreme Court in so far as adopting the principle of binding precedent on the operation of the Supreme Court meaning that when faced with a legal issue the Supreme Court had been faced with before in an earlier case it was duty bound to apply the legal holding or principle established in the earlier case unless the reasoning behind the earlier decision had changed this legal doctrine that the Supreme Court was to follow was called the "Doctrine of Stare Decisis"! It provided stability in the nation's laws Americans could follow Supreme Court legal decisions knowing they could count on being protected in doing so and it stopped people that did not think a specific Supreme Court Decision was good public policy from repeatedly bringing cases before the Supreme Court to get a different outcome one they liked but rather pursue changing the law through Congress whose role in America's Democracy is to make the laws!

Protecting this critical Doctrine of the Supreme Court Sandra Day O'Connor did heroically in 1992. On the issue of abortion the Supreme Court in 1973 heard the Roe v. Wade case and ruled the Constitution provided a right to an abortion even though Justice O'Connor believed that Roe ruling should never had been made because the Constitution did not explicitly address the issue and the Roe Court's reasoning of finding a constitutional right in the penumbra or shroud of the constitution was not legal analysis becoming the nation's Supreme Court still adhered to the Doctrine of the Stare Decisis and in the 1992 Supreme Court case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey which the Justice wrote the opinion for upheld this ruling of Roe of finding for women a constitutional right to an abortion. True to Justice O'Connor's extraordinary legal ability and virtue in that opinion she offered the country a path out of the extreme divisiveness that the abortion issue had and has plagued the nation with as the abortion issue determines the outcomes of elections at the expense of other vital issues affecting America. Unfortunately due to America's leadership slide in character where competing for political power and getting the spoils which goes with such victories takes priority over pursuing principle and this behavior guides the running of our country it resulted in Justice O'Connors leadership in the Casey case being ignored. What Roe's specific ruling entailed was that women had a right to an abortion up to the point of viability which was about six months into a women's pregnancy where viability meant that the fetus could survive on its own. What Justice O'Connor essentially wrote in her opinion is that a women loses her right to an abortion at the point of viability because at that point the fetus becomes a human life, a human person, and so at that point the Government has a compelling interest in protecting that early stage human life and so can regulate abortion at that point. Justice O'Connor in her opinion deliberately essentially waved a flag to the states that abhorred the number of abortions occurring from the Roe law and said pay attention I am offering you a way to reduce this problem and held up her hand and said look at this legal dynamic I have outlined in my opinion this is the answer for you and the nation to address your concerns. She all but spelled it out for these states that what they should do as long as the laws they were enacting were reasonable from a time standpoint is pass laws saying that abortion was prohibited at say for example after fifteen weeks because in our state we believe a human life, a human person comes into existence after fifteen weeks, at that time!

In reflecting on Sandra Day O'Connors life it should make one think it is so sad for the nation our leaders did not follow her lead on how to resolve this abortion issue for the nation. Because the path the nation has taken loading the Supreme Court with right wing partisan Justices that produced the Dobb's decision this year overturning the Roe decision and violating the principles of the Doctrine of Stare Decisis has destroyed the Doctrine of Stare Decisis. Everyone should be crystal clear the Doctrine of Stare Decisis is destroyed in America the doctrine the Supreme Court now follows on overturning precedent or prior rulings is if the legal issue involved is really important and the current court thinks it is a wrongful interpretation it can be overturned, no legal principle is safe from being overturned. Every American should understand what the Dobbs decision has saddled America with, no area of law is safe or can be counted on "now" the right to have a gun, the right to follow one's religious beliefs in the conduct of their profession or business, the right of the Federal Government to regulate commerce within the states and oversee other activities in a state, etc.. The dissenting Justices in the Dobb's decision alluded to this fate that the Dobb's decision will bring America in our future when they wrote that a court that overturns Roe "will pay a terrible price" and "the (Dobb's) court betrays its guiding principles". Reflecting on Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's life the American people should come to the conclusion that America needs to now amend the U.S. Constitution making an amendment that binds the U.S. Supreme Court to follow the Doctrine of Stare Decisis and not overrule prior Supreme Court decisions no matter how wrong and no matter how important the legal issue involved (the Supreme Court does not make the laws in America only Congress does); we should all listen to Justice O'Connor because she could not have said it more emphatically when she said in Casey you destroy the Doctrine of Stare Decisis and you destroy the Supreme Court of the United States of America!

 

Your logic appears to be flawed, since Roe v. Wade was a reversal of earlier Supreme Court precedent.
(United States v. Vuitch as one example)

The ruling in the Roe v. Wade case also relied heavily on a very flawed and twisted interpretation of a section in the Fourteenth Amendment.
thread about that here: The Fourteenth Ammendment (Jan 16, 2013 )