[ This morning, as the Supreme Court heard the most serious
challenge to abortion rights in decades, Justice Sonia Sotomayor
delivered a stirring series of questions challenging the attempt to
upend a person’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy.]
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JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR EXPERTLY EXPOSED THE BULLSHIT OF MISSISSIPPI’S
ATTACK ON ABORTION RIGHTS  
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Lil Kalish
December 1, 2021
MotherJones
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_ This morning, as the Supreme Court heard the most serious challenge
to abortion rights in decades, Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered a
stirring series of questions challenging the attempt to upend a
person’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy. _

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Michael Brochstein/ Zuma // MotherJones

 

It came as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on a Mississippi law
that bans abortion after 15 weeks. Newly rammed full of conservative
Trump appointees, the court is overseeing a challenge that poses a
serious risk for abortion rights across the country. Sotomayor seemed
eager to make clear how such a decision could harm pregnant persons
and the court—especially with Texas eager to implement its abortion
ban
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“The right of a woman to choose, the right to control her own body,
has been clearly set since _Casey_ and never challenged,” Justice
Sotomayor said, referencing the 1992 case _Planned Parenthood v.
Casey_, which affirmed _Roe_, in response to comments by Mississippi
Solicitor General Scott Stewart. “You want us to reject that line of
viability and adopt something different.”

The “viability line”—drawn in 1973 by _Roe_ and which does not
allow states to ban abortions before a fetus could survive outside the
womb—hasn’t been an issue for 30 years. In fact, Sotomayor goes on
to say that 15 justices of varying political backgrounds have affirmed
that basic viability line since 1992. Her point is that this is not a
question of case law, but politics.

“Will this institution survive the stench this creates in the public
perception that the constitution and its reading are just political
acts?…If people actually believe it’s all political, how will the
court survive?” 

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Listen here
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This was one one of the big moments in which Sotomayor dismantled the
arguments of Stewart and conservative colleagues on the bench. But
there were others.

“How is your interest anything but a religious view?” Sotomayor
asked of the state’s attempt to define when life begins. Sotomayor
also fought back against Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s comments on
precedent
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she asked Stewart when the life of a woman and the risk she endures
come into the calculus: “The state is saying to these women that we
can choose to not only physically complicate your existence, put you
at medical risk, make you poorer by the choice, because we
believe…what?”  

When she was interrupted, this happened:

It’s too early to say what will become of Mississippi’s abortion
law, which was blocked by lower courts in 2019. But Justice Sotomayor
was firm in articulating the widespread ramifications of the law if
the Court allows it to take effect.

_[Lil Kalish is a journalist and essayist whose work has taken them
from the streets of downtown yangon to the deserts of southern
california. lil writes about the arts, queerness, race, tech,
incarceration, and the future. on occasion, poems.​_

_they have written for: Mother Jones, The Guardian, LAist, Frontier
Myanmar, The Myanmar Times, ARTnews, Autostraddle, Bitch, and
others. their poetry appears in The Offing, Nepantla, and The
Wildness.​]_

_Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew
corporations and billionaire owners wouldn't fund the type of
hard-hitting journalism we set out to do._

_Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows
us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting
free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones,
please join us with a tax-deductible donation today
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we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2021 demands._

_Donate
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