Birmingham, Ala. – On Thursday, July 22, the Alabama Center for Law and Liberty (“ACLL”) filed an amicus curiae brief in the United States Supreme Court asking it to overrule Roe v. Wade and its progeny.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which a pro-abortion group challenged a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks. The lower courts struck down this law, reasoning that it banned abortions before the baby reached the point of viability, which is the point at which a baby could survive outside the womb. Under Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a state may not ban abortions before that point. However, in taking this case, the Supreme Court agreed to consider whether its viability rule should be overruled.
ACLL filed an amicus curiae brief arguing not only that the viability standard should be discarded but also that Roe and its progeny should be overruled altogether. Matt Clark, ACLL’s Executive Director, explained, “We are pleased that the Supreme Court is willing to revisit the viability standard. Drawing on the work of Chief Justice Parker of the Alabama Supreme Court, who has written extensively about this, we explained how the Court’s abortion framework, including the viability standard, does not comport with other areas of the law that protect the rights of unborn children.” Clark added, “Taken to its logical conclusion, the viability rule means that one person can kill another if the latter is dependent on him to live, which is horrifying.”
However, ACLL did not stop there. Clark explained, “If the Supreme Court agrees to toss the viability standard, it will necessarily have to ask what should replace it. We therefore argued that the Court will not be able to escape the question of whether the Constitution protects a right to abortion at all. Because it does not, and because Roe and its progeny have cost over 60 million lives since 1973, we urged the Court to take this opportunity to throw out Roe altogether.”
ACLL is a conservative nonprofit legal organization based in Birmingham, Alabama, and it is the litigation arm of the Alabama Policy Institute. For more information, visit ACLL’s website at www.alabamalawandliberty.org.