The prospect of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in June has the Abortion Industry and much of the media suddenly discovering the importance of state Supreme Courts. Many times we’ve talked about state Supreme Courts finding a heretofore unknown “right to abortion” hidden away in their constitutions.
For example, Florida. Gary Fineout writes “Florida is one of 11 states whose state constitutions and courts have put in place abortion rights independent of the U.S. Constitution.”
In 1980 voters approved the privacy measure. It states a resident has the “right to be let alone and free from government intrusion into his private life.” In 1989 “The Florida Supreme Court interpreted that to include within one’s right to privacy, a right to terminate a pregnancy, a right to abortion,” according to Stetson University law professor Louis Virelli.
“Florida’s privacy provision is clearly implicated in a woman’s decision of whether or not to continue her pregnancy,” state Justice Leander Shaw wrote for the court at the time. “We can conceive of few more personal or private decisions concerning one’s body that one can make in the course of a lifetime, except perhaps the decision of the terminally ill in their choice of whether to discontinue necessary medical treatment.”
Fineout writes that “Critics opposed to this decision, however, argue the court went beyond the meaning of the text of the privacy amendment and that legislators weren’t considering abortion rights when they placed it on the ballot.”
And with the newly passed ban on post-15 week abortions, at some point soon abortion advocates will challenge the law. The state Supreme Court will take another look which has abortion advocates worried.
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“Florida’s abortion rights are not just intertwined with federal court rulings but also rely on a decades old Florida Supreme Court decision that extends privacy rights to abortion,” Fineout writes. “Those rights are enshrined in the Florida Constitution, and the state Supreme Court has previously cited it to overturn restrictive abortion laws, including one requiring parental consent for minors seeking abortions.”
But Gov. DeSantis has appointed three conservative to the state Supreme Court and come August 31, he will also replace Justice Alan Lawson who is retiring. “There is now a reconstituted Florida Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Charles Canady, a former Republican member of Congress who worked as former Gov. Jeb Bush’s top lawyer before he was appointed to an appeals court by Bush.”
Pro-abortionists insist
“The guardrails are off if that draft [U.S. Supreme Court]opinion becomes final,” said Dan Gelber, a former state legislator and Democratic mayor of Miami Beach whose firm has been involved in several constitutional cases. “I don’t think there’s any question that the Legislature and the governor are going to want to exploit the Supreme Court’s apparent pending decision in every way. It would surprise me if they didn’t.”
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
