Word: court
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This week a Supreme Court refashioned by Ronald Reagan will hear arguments in William L. Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, a case that could lead to Roe's being seriously weakened or even reversed. Either outcome would mean a new world, one in which abortions could be banned in many states or made greatly more difficult to get. After years in which court dictates let politicians dodge the whole roiling issue, abortion would be forced back into the political arena. Back to state legislatures and referenda. Back to lawmakers and voters...
...choice leaders now say the Washington demonstration is just the beginning of a long campaign to guarantee abortion rights. After the march, they hit the offices of Capitol Hill lawmakers to lobby for a federal law that would keep abortion legal even if the court reverses Roe. Activists dumped 200,000 letters at the Justice Department last week, urging Attorney General Dick Thornburgh to drop his request to the court that it overturn Roe. "This has for the past 15 years been a legal struggle," said Ira Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It has now become...
Nowhere has the ground shifted more dramatically than at the Supreme Court, + where the 7-to-2 majority that adopted Roe dwindled with each new Reagan appointment, leaving a deeply divided bench. Just how divided will be apparent when the court hands down its decision on Webster, probably this summer. The case grew out of a 1986 Missouri law that in a nonbinding preamble asserts that life begins at conception. The law forbids abortions by doctors or hospitals that receive state funds. Doctors who get public money would be prohibited even from mentioning abortion to their patients...
...lower courts have struck down portions of the law. In November the Justice Department surprised many people by jumping into the Webster case to propose that the Supreme Court use the occasion to reverse Roe. While a reversal cannot be ruled out, few court watchers expect it just now. Supreme Court Justices usually prefer to muster a sizable majority behind highly controversial decisions, as they did in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the pivotal -- and unanimous -- 1954 school-desegregation case...
...majority," says Columbia University law professor Vincent Blasi. "I also think they'll be confident that in the next few years they will get it." With Roe supporters William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall and Harry Blackmun all in their 80s, George Bush is likely to be able to make some court appointments...