Washington, DC — Americans United for Life has filed a “friend of the court” brief in June Medical Services, LLC v. Gee and Gee v. June Medical Services, LLC in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the Court should uphold a Louisiana law mandating abortion businesses are equipped to facilitate life-saving emergency transfers for patients.
Americans United for Life urges the Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade at the earliest practical opportunity, as Roe’s doctrine remains unsettled and unworkable 47 years after it was decided and continues to roil the courts and the nation.
“In considering whether to stick with precedent (stare decisis),” Americans United for Life writes in the brief authored by AUL Senior Counsel Clarke D. Forsythe, “the Supreme Court has traditionally examined six primary factors: 1) whether the precedent is settled; 2) whether the precedent was wrongly decided; 3) whether the prior decision is workable; 4) whether factual changes have eroded the original decision; 5) whether legal changes have eroded the original decision; and 6) whether reliance interests in the precedent are substantial. Experience and precedent demonstrate that all of the six traditional stare decisis factors weigh in favor of reconsidering Roe at the earliest practical opportunity.”
“As Roe, Casey, and Hellerstedt have shown,” Americans United for Life concludes in its brief, “this Court cannot settle the abortion issue. Even if the Court unanimously reaffirmed Roe, it would merely preserve the legal schizophrenia that exists between the Court’s policy and state and federal law, and do nothing to change the basic social and legal factors that have made Roe immune to settlement.”
“For nearly 50 years, abortion has harmed women,” said Catherine Glenn Foster, President & CEO of Americans United for Life. “I know, because I’m a victim and survivor of America’s abortion culture. And even more condescendingly, the Court’s invented ‘reliance interest’ wrongly argues that women are so weak that they cannot succeed in American life without resorting to abortion. We know this is wrong, we know this is patronizing, and we know that it’s time for the Court to do better.”
In October 2019, the U.S. Supreme announced that it would hear the petition filed by June Medical Services, a Louisiana abortion business, and the cross-petition filed by the State of Louisiana. The cases provide the Court with the first opportunity to speak to the abortion issue in more than three years, and potentially address the continued viability of the constitutional right to abortion invented in Roe v. Wade (1973) and affirmed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992).
The Louisiana abortion law at the center of this U.S. Supreme Court case is consistent with AUL’s model legislation on the issue, and AUL is proud to have had a role in seeing it passed and successfully defended in court.
Americans United for Life (AUL) is a nonprofit, public-interest law and policy organization that holds the distinction of being the first national pro-life organization in America—incorporated in 1971. It protects and defends human life from conception to natural death through vigorous legislative, judicial, and educational efforts.
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