Today the Supreme Court finally recognized that Roe v. Wade had no actual basis in
the Constitution’s text. The Constitution recognized the states as the proper
place for such issues to be legislated on, and this decision finally returns
the issue to them.

The decision should open the door to an era when we value
human life at all stages much more than we have. Abortion is part of this, but
we also must take care to provide more for mothers and children in need. Being
“pro-life” means more than being simply anti-abortion. I hope the
debates about abortion and the sanctity of human life also help to inspire a
more pro-life understanding of criminal justice, the death penalty, and assault
weapons.

Unfortunately, the Court’s affirmation of the Constitution
will trigger attacks on the Court itself. In an era when all of our
constitutional institutions are under brutal attack by partisan ideologues, we
should brace ourselves for reckless efforts to pack the Court. I was honored to
serve on President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court Commission, where we heard many of
these arguments from partisan advocates—and could see all too clearly the
ruinous effects their attacks would have.

These debates will also be affected by intentional
disinformation and accidental misinformation. Some are saying that this is the
first time the Supreme Court rescinded a right that the justices previously
recognized. That’s flatly untrue: The New Deal-era Court rescinded economic
rights that the Court itself had announced for decades; as the Court explained
in its later decisions, such issues were not decided by the Constitution
itself, and thus they needed to be legislated by the states, not by the
justices. Just as now.

Similarly, some assert that abandoning Roe will require abandoning other precedents. That too is false, as I explained recently in the Wall Street Journal. Roe was an extraordinarily weak Supreme Court opinion, and it should never have been the benchmark for “stare decisis” itself.

Finally, we should anticipate activists’ efforts to divert
these issues away from the states yet again—this time to the administrative
state. Agencies like the FDA and HHS will face enormous pressure—from activists
both outside and inside the agencies—to stretch old statutes and create new
abortion rights that are as baseless as Roe
itself. This, too, would be a profound mistake, and another ruinous attack on
crucial governing institutions.

The post Dobbs and the Days Ahead: Valuing Constitutional Institutions and Human Life appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.