So much for Stare Decisis!
For those who don’t know, Stare Decisis is the legal term that basically states that judicial decisions are precedents and should be followed. We heard about this a lot during the most recent discussions over President Bush’s judicial nominations. Judge Alito stated that he believed in the idea of Stare Decisis and that would help him come to decisions as a judge on the bench. I didn’t believe him for a second and it looks I was correct in doing so.
In a drastic turn of events, the Supreme Court narrowly upheld a ban on an abortion procedure even though that procedure did not allow for the woman to protect her own physical health if that procedure was needed to do so. In previous legal precedent, no abortion law could place an undue burden on a woman. A woman whose health is at risk because of a pregnancy who is unable to terminate that pregnancy is definitely suffering from an undue burden. The decision of the court would allow such a woman to try and prove that her situation warranted such a procedure and that the law was unconstitutional in her case. However, this just continues the burden and she would most likely not be able to obtain the procedure until well after her pregnancy was over.
Stare Decisis should not be considered as something absolutely permanent. Brown vs. Board of Education did overturn Plessy v. Fergusson, getting rid of the whole “separate but equal” mess. However, violating Stare Decisis should be an exception and not the rule.
And what is scary about this ruling is that this will now give the extremists on the right the idea that they can keep trying to chip away at abortion rights and that they may be successful because of the new shape of our Supreme Court. Abortion is not a “good thing”, and I doubt that any woman wakes up thinking “yay, today is the day I get my abortion”. However, it is something that should remain safe, legal and rare. We can reduce the number of abortions that take place through education and not through legislation. That way, we don’t wind up having legal situations where a woman has to hope a judge can make up his/her mind before her situation becomes even more threatening.