Judicial Watch Statement on Supreme Court Abortion Ruling

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement regarding the Supreme Court’s ruling against the Louisiana law requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital:

Today, a rogue Supreme Court allowed the abortion industry to set abortion policy nationally, despite the resulting risk to “women’s health.” This is another sad day for the rule of law and the Constitution. Today, by a bare majority the court violated the Constitution by changing the rules and granting the abortion industry a special veto power over laws seeking to promote and protect the health of women and their unborn children. The Supreme Court should have put a stop to the misuse of the courts by special interests that seek to overturn laws passed by the people’s representatives.

Instead, Chief Justice Roberts, in another political move, bends the rule of law to accommodate and protect the radical political position that the Constitution prevents the states from taking steps to protect innocent life. The Chief Justice has repeatedly broken his promise to be a neutral “umpire” and instead too often acts as a “politician in robes.”

As Justice Thomas writes in dissent, “today a majority of the Court perpetuates its ill-founded abortion jurisprudence by enjoining a perfectly legitimate state law and doing so without jurisdiction.”

The one silver lining is that no member of the Supreme Court was willing today to defend the Supreme Court’s abominable Roe decision. And the march for life will go on.

Judicial Watch filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Dr. Rebecca Gee v. June Medical Services, et al. (No. 18-1460), in which it opposed abortion providers’ efforts to overturn Louisiana’s Unsafe Abortion Protection Act. In its brief, Judicial Watch argued that abortion providers petitioning the court to overturn the law lacked a legally protectable interest in the outcome, otherwise known as “standing.”

Judicial Watch pointed out that plaintiffs generally may file a lawsuit only to protect their own rights, not the rights of others. In this litigation, the lower courts allowed third party abortion interests to challenge the law on the theory they represent the interests of women. As the brief points out, expanding health and safety requirements for abortionists can be argued to be in the best interests of women.

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