How Will Justice Barrett Rule on Abortion Case?

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decided to take up an abortion case out of Mississippi.  An attorney with The Heritage Foundation (HF) says all eyes are on Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett— the newest member of the court.

The SCOTUS’s decision to consider Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act (according to The Associated Press) sets up a showdown over abortion— probably in the fall— with a more conservative court seemingly ready to dramatically alter nearly 50-years of pro-abortion rulings.

“The Gestational Age Act was passed in 2018 and bans abortions after 15-weeks, except for two minor circumstances that are exceptions to the rule,” explains Sarah Parshall Perry (legal fellow for HF).  “We have no idea how Amy Coney Barrett will make good on her promises to interpret the Constitution from an originalist standpoint— but we do know in her personal life naturally she is opposed to abortion.”

In 2020, the SCOTUS ruled against Louisiana’s regulation requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals.  That 5-4 decision was a victory for the pro-abortion movement.  However, that was when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was still on the SCOTUS.  Amy Coney Barrett now occupies that seat on the bench.

“We are cautiously optimistic that [Barrett] will take it as an opportunity to review not just the science that is evolving over when the unborn child can feel pain, when fetal heartbeat is detected,” Perry tells OneNewsNow, “but also will utilize this as an opportunity to interpret the Constitution in the manner in which it was written … and to reevaluate what many scholars believe was a poorly written judicial opinion by Justice [Harry] Blackmun in Roe v. Wade [in 1973].”

It is possible, according to Perry, that the SCOTUS could rule again that a woman has what justices call “a constitutional right to an abortion,” but also that states can set limits on abortion.  “This was never to have been a federal issue,” Perry explains.  “Justice [Antonin] Scalia, in his famous dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, said ‘ultimately this is an issue we never should have involved ourselves in, it’s best left to the state legislatures where citizens can debate, they can vote, and they can speak their minds, this was never to have been an issue that we had involved ourselves in.’ ”  “So,” Perry concludes, “getting state limits to either make their own determinations on the legality of abortion or the illegality of the same is ultimately what we would see as the right constitutional outcome.”

Some observers currently give conservatives on the SCOTUS a 6-3 advantage; but Chief Justice John Roberts— who’s hardly been an abortion-rights supporter in his more than 15-years on the court— has shown a tendency to side with the more liberal judges in some matters.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel