This is how Roe v. Wade ends — without pretense or pretext, the conservative movement’s tireless dream of forced birth, brought to fruition through the naked promises of Donald Trump, who said if he could put “another two or perhaps three justices on,” Roe would be overturned “automatically, in my opinion, because I am putting pro-life justices on the Court.” On Wednesday, all three of Trump’s justices hearing a case challenging Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban seemed ready to prove him right. Even John Roberts’s feeble attempts at describing, if not actually finding, a compromise would mean overturning all the prior Supreme Court decisions that have made abortion legal.
Oral arguments have misled people into making false predictions before, but if any of the conservatives were inclined to pull a surprise move, there was no sign of it in the almost two-hour-long session. For the first time in nearly 30 years, everyone arguing about abortion before the Court and the justices had to put their cards on the table.
By Supreme Court standards, the session was unusually blunt and at times heated. Stephen Breyer crankily noted that anyone could see it was the arrival of “new members” that had emboldened the right, perhaps hoping the justices Trump nominated might not want to be pawns. As Roberts noticed aloud, the solicitor general of Mississippi had technically been defending a 15-week abortion ban, a stalking horse for overturning Roe, but in later briefs had abruptly pivoted to openly asking for Roe to be overturned. Roberts didn’t say it, but the only thing that changed in between was that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died and Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed. “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” Sonia Sotomayor asked pointedly.
