Tuesday, October 22

Media’s stress on all-male South Carolina court docket overlooks that males determined Roe

Rarely is it reported that an all-male court docket determined Roe v. Wade, however the intercourse of the justices was the principle media takeaway from the South Carolina Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of the state’s fetal heartbeat regulation.

Multiple mainstream retailers, together with The Associated Press, NBC, PBS NewsHour, Axios and The New York Times, emphasised that the state’s all-male court docket upheld the measure signed into regulation in May by Republican Gov. Henry McMaster.

“South Carolina’s new all-male highest court reverses course on abortion, upholding strict 6-week ban,” stated Politico in a Wednesday publish on X.



Posted ProPublica: “Today, South Carolina’s all-male Supreme Court upheld the state’s 6-week abortion ban.”

The AP reported: “The continued erosion of legal abortion access across the U.S. South comes after Republican state lawmakers replaced the lone woman on the court, Justice Kaye Hearn, who reached the state’s mandatory retirement age.”

Pro-life advocates have been fast to level out that there have been no feminine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 when it legalized abortion nationwide in its 7-2 choice in Roe v. Wade.

“Way to go South Carolina! Keep on protecting Life!” posted the Radiance Foundation. “Funny how the @AP is feigning outrage over all-male justices making a decision on abortion. They had no problem with 7 male #SCOTUS justices giving us the violence of #Roe.”

The conservative weblog Legal Insurrection listed the all-male references by media retailers and requested, “WHY is that important?”

“Oh, yeah. The legal reasoning behind the decision is sound. It was the correct decision. But the media and left have to keep the outrage,” stated Legal Insurrection commentator Mary Chastain. “It just so happens the South Carolina Supreme Court consists of only males.”

She added: “Um, an all-male SCOTUS ruled in favor of Roe v. Wade.”

Justice Hearn, who retired final yr at age 72, wrote the 3-2 majority opinion hanging down the state’s 2021 fetal-heartbeat regulation, deciding that it was “an unreasonable restriction upon a woman’s right to privacy, and is therefore unconstitutional.”

On Wednesday, nonetheless, South Carolina Justice John Kittredge, writing for the 4-1 majority, famous that the state Legislature reacted to the choice by revising the fetal-heartbeat invoice and passing an up to date model this yr.

Planned Parenthood, which led the authorized problem, argued that the court docket ought to defer to precedent, however Justice Kittredge stated the earlier choice “has no application here, for the 2023 act is materially different from the 2021 act.”

He cited the Legislature’s emphasis within the 2023 invoice on the state’s “compelling interest to protect the life of unborn children” and deletion of the 2021 measure’s reference to “informed maternal choice.”

“This new balance struck in the 2023 act between the competing interests of the mother and unborn child was combined with the Legislature’s new focus on contraceptives and early pregnancy testing, as well as a repeal of the statutes that codified the Roe v. Wade trimester framework,” Justice Kittredge stated within the ruling.

Judge Gary Hill changed Justice Hearn in February, making South Carolina the one state within the nation with out a girl on its Supreme Court.

Justice Harry Blackmun wrote Roe’s majority opinion. He was joined by Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justices Potter Stewart, William J. Brennan Jr., William O. Douglas, Thurgood Marshall and Lewis F. Powell Jr. Dissenting have been Justices William Rehnquist and Byron White.

The first girl named to the Supreme Court was Sandra Day O’Conner, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Content Source: www.washingtontimes.com