August 2, 2021

Over 200 Congressmembers File Brief Supporting Mississippi in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization

200 members of Congress have joined the list of pro-lifers supporting the state of Mississippi in the upcoming Supreme Court case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The pro-life legislators give several arguments in their brief
  • Current Supreme Court precedent is inconsistent regarding whether states can place limitations on pre-viability abortions. The legislators wrote, “Some federal courts have interpreted Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992) as creating a bright-line rule that forbids lawmakers from restricting previability abortions in any way, regardless of the strength of the interests at stake.” The brief notes that the Court created an exception to this rule, stating, “the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Act this Court upheld in Gonzales v. Carhart without regard for the viability line.”
  • The American public supports pro-life protections. “The second-trimester regulation embodied in Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act is strongly supported by the American public,” reads the brief. This is echoed by a Marist poll conducted earlier this year. 76% of respondents to that poll wanted abortion to be either banned or limited to the first three months of pregnancy.
  • States, through their legislators and electors, can be trusted to make laws governing abortion. The Congress members' brief reads, “Mississippi's case provides the Court a chance to release its vise grip on abortion politics, as Congress and the States have shown that they are ready and able to address the issue in ways that reflect Americans’ varying viewpoints and are grounded in the science of fetal development and maternal health.”
  • The legistlators' brief reads that states, “have expressed the desire to protect life through a burgeoning number of laws enacted to further the States’ important interests in protecting women from dangerous late-term abortion, ending the destruction of human life based on sexism, racism, or ableism, upholding the integrity of the medical profession against the barbaric practice of dismembering human beings in the womb, and protecting preborn infants from the horrific pain of such abortions.”
  • Finally, the brief argues, “It is long overdue for this Court to return lawmaking to legislators.” It then quotes a dissent by Justice Scalia in a 1988 Supreme Court Case: “The most reliable objective signs [of societal views] consist of the legislation that the society has enacted. It will rarely if ever be the case that the Members of this Court will have a better sense of the evolution in views of the American people than do their elected representatives.”