Civic Register
| 6.24.22
Supreme Court Overturns Federal Abortion Rights Under Roe & Casey - What Do the Opinions Say?
How do you feel about the Supreme Court’s ruling?
What’s the story?
- The Supreme Court on Friday issued a decision in a case known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health that overturned past abortion precedents under Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The ruling effectively sends the issue back to the states to determine how restrictive or permissive their abortion policies should be.
- The case concerned Mississippi’s ban on elective abortions more than 15 weeks into pregnancy except in cases of medical emergencies and severe fetal abnormalities. Mississippi enacted the Gestational Age Act in 2018, although a district court judge blocked it shortly thereafter and appeals have been unsuccessful to date. Mississippi asked the Supreme Court to overrule Roe and Casey because those precedents prohibited most restrictions on pre-viability abortions performed prior to the roughly 23-week viability threshold (the earliest birth a premature infant has survived is believed to be 21 weeks).
- The case was argued in December 2021. In May, a draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked to the press in one of the most significant breaches of the Court’s ordinarily tightly-held operations. The leak is still under investigation. In early June, a man who said he was enraged by the leaked draft opinion was arrested at the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and charged with attempted murder.
- The Court’s ruling upheld Mississippi’s abortion law and struck down the past abortion precedents under Roe and Casey as wrongly decided. It’s the most significant reversal of Supreme Court precedent since Brown v. Board of Education (1954) held that racial segregation as permitted under Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was unconstitutional.
- The decision largely broke down along the Court’s 6-3 ideological split, with the conservative justices either joining the majority opinion or writing an opinion concurring in the judgment, and the liberal justices dissenting.
What did the justices in the majority say?
- Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion and was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett. A number of passages were similar, if not identical, to the leaked draft opinion. Alito’s majority opinion began by discussing the background of abortion law in America:
“Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views. Some believe fervently that a human person comes into being at conception and that abortion ends an innocent life. Others feel just as strongly that any regulation of abortion invades a woman’s right to control her own body and prevents women from achieving full equality. Still others in a third group think that abortion should be allowed under some but not all circumstances, and those within this group hold a variety of views about the particular restrictions that should be imposed.
For the first 185 years after the adoption of the Constitution, each State was permitted to address this issue in accordance with the views of its citizens. Then, in 1973, this Court decided Roe v. Wade. Even though the Constitution makes no mention of abortion, the Court held that it confers a broad right to obtain one. It did not claim that American law or the common law had ever recognized such a right, and its survey of history ranged from the constitutionally irrelevant (e.g., its discussion of abortion in antiquity) to the plainly incorrect (e.g., its assertion that abortion was probably never a crime under the common law). After cataloguing a wealth of other information having no bearing on the meaning of the Constitution, the opinion concluded with a numbered set of rules much like those that might be found in a statute enacted by a legislature.
Under this scheme, each trimester of pregnancy was regulated differently, but the most critical line was drawn at roughly the end of the second trimester, which, at the time, corresponded to the point at which a fetus was thought to achieve “viability”, i.e., the ability to survive outside the womb. Although the Court acknowledged that States had a legitimate interest in protecting “potential life,” it found that this interest could not justify any restriction on previability abortions. The Court did not explain the basis for this line, and even abortion supporters have found it hard to defend Roe’s reasoning. One prominent constitutional scholar wrote that he “would vote for a statute very much like the one the Court end[ed] up drafting” if he were “a legislator,” but his assessment of Roe was memorable and brutal: Roe was “not constitutional law” at all and gave almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.
At the time of Roe, 30 States still prohibited abortion at all stages. In the years prior to that decision, about a third of the States had liberalized their laws, but Roe abruptly ended that political process. It imposed the same highly restrictive regime on the entire Nation, and it effectively struck down the abortion laws of every single State. As Justice Byron White aptly put it in his dissent, the decision represented the “exercise of raw judicial power,” and it sparked a national controversy that has embittered our political culture for a half-century.”
- The majority opinion also discussed Casey, which sought to uphold Roe under the doctrine of stare decisis (letting precedent stand) but also “did a fair amount of overruling” as the justice noted:
“Paradoxically, the judgment in Casey did a fair amount of overruling. Several important abortion decisions were overruled in toto, and Roe itself was overruled in part. Casey threw out Roe’s trimester scheme and substituted a new rule of uncertain origin under which States were forbidden to adopt any regulation that imposed an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to have an abortion. The decision provided no clear guidance about the difference between a “due” and an “undue” burden. But the three Justices who authored the controlling opinion “call[ed] the contending sides of a national controversy to end their national division” by treating the Court’s decision as the final settlement of the question of the constitutional right to abortion.”
- Alito’s majority opinion went on to explain that Roe and Casey must be overturned as unconstitutional:
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U. S. 702, 721 (1997) (internal quotation marks omitted).
The right to abortion does not fall within this category. Until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right was entirely unknown in American law. Indeed, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, three quarters of the States made abortion a crime at all stages of pregnancy. The abortion right is also critically different from any other right that this Court has held to fall within the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of “liberty.” Roe’s defenders characterize the abortion right as similar to the rights recognized in past decisions involving matters such as intimate sexual relations, contraception, and marriage, but abortion is fundamentally different, as both Roe and Casey acknowledged, because it destroys what those decisions called “fetal life” and what the law now before us describes as an “unborn human being.”
- The majority opinion also noted that contrary to the argument made by the Biden administration’s solicitor general that upholding the Mississippi law could undercut other constitutional rights, the opinion does no such thing and applies solely to abortion:
“Unable to show concrete reliance on Roe and Casey themselves, the Solicitor General suggests that overruling those decisions would “threaten the Court’s precedents holding that the Due Process Clause protects other rights.” Brief for United States 26 (citing Obergefell, 576 U. S. 644; Lawrence, 539 U. S. 558; Griswold, 381 U. S. 479). That is not correct for reasons we have already discussed. As even the Casey plurality recognized, “[a]bortion is a unique act” because it terminates “life or potential life.” 505 U. S., at 852; see also Roe, 410 U. S., at 159 (abortion is “inherently different from marital intimacy,” “marriage,” or “procreation”). And to ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
- Alito’s majority opinion concluded:
“We end this opinion where we began. Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”
- In addition to joining the majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Brett Kavanaugh filed concurring opinions. Chief Justice John Roberts concurred in the judgment and wrote that while he would have taken “a more measured course” on Roe and Casey overall but agreed with upholding Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. He explained:
“I agree with the Court that the viability line established by Roe and Casey should be discarded under a straightforward stare decisis analysis. That line never made any sense. Our abortion precedents describe the right at issue as a woman’s right to choose to terminate her pregnancy. That right should therefore extend far enough to ensure a reasonable opportunity to choose, but need not extend any further—certainly not all the way to viability. Mississippi’s law allows a woman three months to obtain an abortion, well beyond the point at which it is considered “late” to discover a pregnancy. See A. Ayoola, Late Recognition of Unintended Pregnancies, 32 Pub. Health Nursing 462 (2015) (pregnancy is discoverable and ordinarily discovered by six weeks of gestation). I see no sound basis for questioning the adequacy of that opportunity.”
What did the dissenting justices say?
- A dissenting opinion was jointly filed by Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Elena Kagan. The dissent began:
“For half a century, Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973), and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992), have protected the liberty and equality of women. Roe held, and Casey reaffirmed, that the Constitution safeguards a woman’s right to decide for herself whether to bear a child. Roe held, and Casey reaffirmed, that in the first stages of pregnancy, the government could not make that choice for women. The government could not control a woman’s body or the course of a woman’s life: It could not determine what the woman’s future would be. See Casey, 505 U. S., at 853; Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U. S. 124, 171–172 (2007) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting). Respecting a woman as an autonomous being, and granting her full equality, meant giving her substantial choice over this most personal and most consequential of all life decisions.
Roe and Casey well understood the difficulty and divisiveness of the abortion issue. The Court knew that Americans hold profoundly different views about the “moral[ity]” of “terminating a pregnancy, even in its earliest stage.” Casey, 505 U. S., at 850. And the Court recognized that “the State has legitimate interests from the outset of the pregnancy in protecting” the “life of the fetus that may become a child.” Id., at 846. So the Court struck a balance, as it often does when values and goals compete. It held that the State could prohibit abortions after fetal viability, so long as the ban contained exceptions to safeguard a woman’s life or health. It held that even before viability, the State could regulate the abortion procedure in multiple and meaningful ways. But until the viability line was crossed, the Court held, a State could not impose a “substantial obstacle” on a woman’s “right to elect the procedure” as she (not the government) thought proper, in light of all the circumstances and complexities of her own life. Ibid.
Today, the Court discards that balance. It says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs. An abortion restriction, the majority holds, is permissible whenever rational, the lowest level of scrutiny known to the law. And because, as the Court has often stated, protecting fetal life is rational, States will feel free to enact all manner of restrictions. The Mississippi law at issue here bars abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. Under the majority’s ruling, though, another State’s law could do so after ten weeks, or five or three or one—or, again, from the moment of fertilization. States have already passed such laws, in anticipation of today’s ruling. More will follow. Some States have enacted laws extending to all forms of abortion procedure, including taking medication in one’s own home. They have passed laws without any exceptions for when the woman is the victim of rape or incest. Under those laws, a woman will have to bear her rapist’s child or a young girl her father’s—no matter if doing so will destroy her life. So too, after today’s ruling, some States may compel women to carry to term a fetus with severe physical anomalies—for example, one afflicted with Tay-Sachs disease, sure to die within a few years of birth. States may even argue that a prohibition on abortion need make no provision for protecting a woman from risk of death or physical harm. Across a vast array of circumstances, a State will be able to impose its moral choice on a woman and coerce her to give birth to a child.”
RELATED READING
- Man Arrested for Attempting to Murder Justice Kavanaugh (6/8/22)
- What Did the Supreme Court Say About Abortion Rights in Cases Like Roe, Casey, & Others? (5/10/22)
- Supreme Court Confirms Authenticity of Leaked Draft Opinion in Abortion Case - What Does It Say? (5/3/22)
- Supreme Court Hears Arguments in Mississippi Abortion Case (12/1/21)
- Mississippi Asks Supreme Court to Overrule Roe v. Wade in Upcoming Abortion Case (7/23/21)
— Eric Revell
(Photo Credit: jordanuhl7 via Flickr / Creative Commons)
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Forcing women to have babies while providing NO Universal Healthcare and No law with teeth that requires the father to contribute to the support of the child's education, food, housing & medical care is a violation of human rights and puts women at a disadvantage in every imaginable aspect of her life.
In the eloquent words of Pink, "it's just you & your hand tonight."
Who says Taliban prevails in afghanistan & pakistan or isis in the middle east
the american version continues to erode the foundations of this country
sam alitos assertions are more rage ramblings than scholarly opinions and the rest follow in a herd mentality
now all institutions are broken and we can confirm that america is truly in decline
shame on scotus
shame on congress
Here is a package deal I could support:
a) Retire Clarence Thomas, 32 years is enough. Won't retire? Impeach him for failing to recuse in Jan 6 cases.
b) Expand the Supreme Court with five new seats and five more circuit courts (far West, Southeast, Mountain, Puerto Rico & S. Florida, Pacific Islands)
c) Add 200 new federal District courts to ease overcrowding.
d) Apply term limits of 15 years to all judges.
e) Adopt Code of Ethics for federal bench.
f) Move this into federal law in 2023.
Adopt this reform into law in 2023.
I've always thought that abortion rights should be handled on a state level. Don't let this Decision overshadow your thoughts and make you forget about all the good work the January 6 Committee had been doing. Justice must be served to save our country from those who would control every single action, thought and desire we would have. Keep in mind, it is a country for the people and by the people so do not let corruption trigger any of you to do something wrong.
First of all, have you read the Decision? all it says is that will be up to the state, and no mapper what the DEMS tell you this is not part of the CONSTITUTION, and so it will be up to your state to make the decision you want, in my state N.J., they think the taxpayer will pay for anyone from any state to come to N.J. and the taxpayer will pay for it (BULLSHIT), that will never happen. but you can always go with what the DEMS want, at any time doing the PREGNANCY you can go have a big needle suck the brain out of the baby and they put the baby out by the feet, is that SICK or what. now we have Joe Biden(brainless), lying, Pelosi and her puppet. Schumer lying about what they will do for you, and Biden is at war with OIL producers (NATIONAL SECURITY) taking oil out of the National oil reserve, is he replacing it??? that is for Americans at WAR (we are NOT) but there are a dot of very bad players in the world,
Fascism now defines the illegitimate SCOTUS.
Notice the uncontrollable glee being expressed by our fascists here, praising *god* - the same one they invoke to justify the violence they'll utilize from now on, whenever elections are 'stolen' from them.
Republicans are The Enemy.
#RepublicanFascism
rep mary miller on a podium @ dumbkopf maga rally thanks him on behalf of all maga patriots 'thank you for victory for white life'
this is what its all about so lets cut out all the pretense
those who want a homogeneous white society move to the red states
those who want a dynamic cosmopolitan tolerant society move to the blue states
problem solved
shame on scotus for tilting the scales and providing cover to criminals and traitors
shame on gutless gop for the lies obfuscation hurdles and misinformation
True freedom ended today. This IS Amy's law.
The United States of America is a goverment run by individuals rightfully elected to represent my neighbors and me on a local, state, and federal level. The mechanisms of which our federal government is operated is explicitly outlined in our Constitution. I understand this fact and reality, and desire to understand the daily proceedings of my elected officials, and seek communication with them. That is why I joined Causes -- to know what my elected officials are up to, to know where they stand on issues & bills, and to communicate with them my thoughts on issues & bills important to me so that I may be equally represented amongst my neighbors.
The United States of America is NOT a democracy. In fact, the word "democracy" is no where to be found in either our Constitution or our Declaration of Independence. Our United States of America is, as defined by our Constitution, "a Republican Form of Goverment" -- that is, our nation is a Republic, not a Democracy (Article IV, Section 4).
Our Founding Fathers were skeptical and anxious about democracy. They were aware of the evils that accompany a tyranny of the majority. The Framers of the Constitution went to great lengths to ensure that the federal government was not based on the will of the majority and was not, therefore, democratic.The Framers of our Constitution were deliberate and explicit in this manner, emphasizing the importance of enshrining and maintaining a republican form of goverment over a democracy. Democracy, by definition, is rule of the majority. In other words, the people rule. In a republic, however, the people elect specific persons to represent the people in a regulated fashion. Therefore, in our United States of America, the will of the majority is not esteemed higher than the rule of law and evidence. This is true from our electoral system, to Congress, and the way our lower courts and the Supreme Court operate.
The purpose of our Constitution is to further the cause of Liberty, not democracy. Liberty is inherent in the individual, not the will of the people. The Framers were adamant on ensuring the protection of individual Liberty from being voted away by a majority's will, that they enumerated fundemental rights of the individual into the Constitution (Bill of Rights). The Bill of Rights provides heightened protection for fundamental liberties, protecting both natural rights, such as freedom of conscience, and civil rights, such as protection against arbitrary search and seizure. Some rights can be confined if the government satisfies due process requirements. However, no matter how large the majority, one’s right to practice the religion of choice or to be free from arbitrary search by government officials cannot be abridged or simply voted away.
Simply put, just because a majority of Americans believe a woman has a right to have an abortion, that majority belief does not make it morally right or even legal. If they want to codify abortion as a legal right, they must craft it into a bill and enact it into law.
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) substantially changed the interpretation of existing law by stating that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of our United States Constitution provided a fundamental "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's liberty to abort her fetus. This right was not absolute, and had to be balanced against the government's interest in protecting women's health and protecting prenatal (the fetus’s) life.
Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, No. 19-1392, 597 U.S (2022) overruled this decision, stating that our Constitution does not confer any person a right to have an abortion, and therefore the Tenth Amendment reigns in allowing State goverments to enact laws regulating abortion.
Essentially, Roe v. Wade stretched the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment beyond its intended meaning, allowing the federal government to infringe upon an explicit right solely granted to the individual States. Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization corrected the interpretation and placed the federal government back within the boundaries of the Constitution.
If a citizenry of a republican form of goverment is not satisfied with current legislation in their own State, then it is up to them to speak with their respective representatives so that they may enact new laws or amend existing laws. If they are dissatisfied with their elected representatives due to inaction or unagreeable action, then it is in the power of the citizenry to elect new representatives who will properly represent the will of the people in their respective districts and States.
Let this be call for all to remember and promote the Cause of The Constitution rather than the will of the majority, and to maintain a platform for citizens to connect with their respective elected representatives so that they may to remember their oath to uphold and protect the Cause of The Constitution, which is Liberty, not democracy.
While I do not fully agree with overturning roe, I do agree with overturning Casey. Row had a goal of allowing during the first trimester and made post that that it should be rare. And even then it was not a right given to women, it was permission for a doctor to perform the procedure.
There should be carve out for incest, rape, health of the mother. In many cases knowing whether you want to terminate a pregnancy by rape or incest, it does not take 6-9 months to consider it.
we limit scientific research to 6-8 weeks because we are worried about harming a human life.
I can see where this is a loss for those preaching replacement theory. White people could already have been a minority if they did not pressure people of color to terminate their pregnancies at a rate of 9-1.
Overall I am not sure what to think yet. If the roles were reversed and unless you could prove financial viability should you be forced to terminate? Is that something that would be accepted more than trying to spin that those who may not be financially capable should get one in order to conform?
Allowing states to establish blanket anti-abortion laws is dangerous on a medical level. There should be clear exceptions for rape, incest, age of the mother, medical safety concerns for the mother and medical/genetic problems for the unborn child that would make like exceedingly challenging or dangerous for the child and/or mother.
Legislators should consult with a nonpartisan panel of physicians including family doctors, obstetricians and maternal-fetal medicine specialists with regard to police exceptions for medical concerns.
Blanket anti-abortion laws are also dangerous for community success and well-being. For example, a low income family with 3 children who's birth control failed could be severely negatively affected if the mother is forced to continue an undesired pregnancy. This is also true for families with medium to high incomes, although the negative affects would likely be psychological.
Legislators should consult with a nonpartisan panel of research psychologists and sociologists with regard to the negative psychological and social effects of blanket abortion laws.
This is outrageous. This country is heading backwards with human rights. This Supreme Court clearly has an agenda and lied under oath when they said the precedent was set. Congress needs to make sure women have the same fundamental rights as men. There are no laws regulating men's bodies.
The negative impact of this will span across all communities and social classes. The breadth of financial, emotional, and social burden can't be explained in a single comment. This will likely impact minority and impoverished populations more severely than others as well. Children born to parents who are unprepared or unwilling create hardship for all involved. The economic impact will spread through all social classes as well. Without the right to choose, many more women will lose out on opportunities for continued education and career growth. Many men will also lose these opportunities. The foster care/ state custody systems are already underfunded and over encumbered. This applies to all forms of government financial assistance to parents and children as well. Many children will slip through the cracks because our country lacks the systems and funding needed to care for the sheer number of children that could come from this decision let alone the numbers we already have. Everything I've said just barely scratches the surface of the impact of this decision (let alone the risk this holds for the loss of other rights for women and minority/ at risk populations). This sets a dangerous and heart wrenching precedent. Expanding rights of women and other groups historically discriminated against has been and will be my major driving force in all voting decisions. I hope because of this others will focus even more on this as well.
Be sure we who believe in freedom...ACTUAL freedom...will not stand for this. To every man legislative actor...know this.
WOMEN ARE NOT LIVESTOCK,
AND WE WILL NOT BE TREATED AS SECOND CLASS CITIZENS.
AT EVER LEVEL OF YOUR LIFE
EXPECT TROUBLE.
DO YOU THINK WE WILL PASSICELY ACCEPT THIS.
YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE BROKEN.
Yay.
This is not ok! The arrogance of these justices is mind blowing - they weren't voted for and are making decisions for half our country, removing our rights. They are illegitimate. I have no respect for them or their station.
We need our government to fight for us. Do something! Bodily autonomy is not up for debate. Women are not equal without control over our bodies.
This is WRONG!
This is not about abortion. This concerns bthe government interfering and preventing a person from their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT of freedom in defining and determining their future. It also infringes on an individuals right to personal privacy in the pursuit of happiness. Paternalistic control of an adult woman is outside of the scope and boundaries of a democratic government. I am disappointed in the court's politicization of this issue. This decision will not stand.
From the moment the Merrick Garland seat was stolen, this court has been illegitimate.
The things we have learned about Justice Thomas and his wife's actions was just the moment it became clear how bad it has gotten.
Congress must expand the Supreme Court; we have had more justices in the past and there is clear need. We should at least match the number of circuits.
Congress must codify Roe and that probably means a filibuster carve out.
Justice Thomas should be impeached for his votes to conceal his wife's involvement in the coup attempt. Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett need to be brought before the committee and address whether they perjured themselves when asked about Roe in particular.
This is a time for action from Congress, not more calls for votes and campaign donations.
An essential measure to safeguard Americans from this despicable decision that removes the rights of millions and increases government power is limiting data collection. Consequently, passage of The Health and Location Data Protection Act is essential. The legislation prevents the sale or distribution of information from data collection organizations. Such data could be that pertaining to your location, websites searches, medical information, pharmecutical orders... all aspects of our lives. It is essential that our Congressional members safeguard personal informstion as it could be used in a means that surpasses government limits of interference in our lives.
The Constitution doesn't mention abortion. So this subject goes back to the states. Roe was bad law.
We must protect the right to abortion and women's bodily autonomy. We must not loose sight of the further implications of this ruling such as further stress to families of color and poor families. And the possible ramifications to other rights and the criminalization of pregnancy complications etc.
Women's rights are Human rights and whoever says differently, especially Rob Portman and Brad Wenstrup (who are supposedly my Representatives) will not prevail. This issue will energize Americans like never before to vote against the GOP in November.
I applaud corporation that support women right and heath over ideological or politics review. Women live with this, not men. When men grow a uterus, then they can have a say!
I am furious about the decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe.
Justice Samuel Alito is telling women what goes on in their uterus? He must have one and the problem of having one and knows about the responsibility of moral choose?
#1 this does call into question the validity of this court: this is a very bad thing. The court ignored 50 years of strong precedent for one portion of the argument, 120 years of precedent for another, and the entire history of the country and the basis of the constitution for a third. Nothing like that has come form the court before.
#2 There are multiple possible reactions and solutions. The ones I like best are A. federal law establishing the right to pivacy we thought was established in the constitution and that was verified by other rulings, including Roe, and protecting the rights to abortion AND OTHER MEDICAL PROCEDURES supported by the AMA and CDC. B. a constitutional amendemnt rewording the ERA to include thezse provisions to ensure that no following coourt can suddenly decide that the constitution does not mean what it so clearly says. I encourage my representatives in Washington to get behind these efforts.