The US Supreme Court implies that our Constitutional Court exceeds its powers

On June 24, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled to overturn earlier rulings of the same Supreme Court that prohibit banning abortion. Now each US state will once again be able to decide on abortion issues on its own, according to the discretion of the majority of its citizens.

The Supreme Court's judgment of June 24, 2022, caused a huge socio-political storm around the world, with many rushing to perform the rite of the profession of faith, without much insight into the circumstances of the case, echoing US President Joe Biden's remarks about a "dark" day in US history. Although it should rather be a day of superficiality, carelessness or even stupidity, when respectable people in society demonstrate their willingness to express an “opinion” by reading only the headlines or the first lines of the news.

Let us first clarify what this Supreme Court judgment really means. Contrary to what many "dark day" advocates believe, this judgment does not ban abortion. It merely allows the legislatures of each state to decide abortion issues for themselves, since the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade and 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey rulings imposed a federal ban on states regulating their own use of abortion. These rulings allowed abortions for women up to the sixth month of pregnancy (up to three months without any restrictions, then under certain conditions) throughout the USA.

The US Supreme Court ruling of June 24, 2022, overturns these 1973 and 1992 rulings, with the result that individual states will now be able to decide for themselves whether to prohibit or allow abortion. Here is the operative part of the US Supreme Court's judgment: "The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

This Supreme Court ruling will have a practical effect in the 13 US states that have already passed so-called "trigger laws" restricting abortion. That is, laws which, according to the 1973 and 1992 Supreme Court judgments, do not work unless circumstances change. Now, following the Supreme Court's judgment of June 24, circumstances have changed and the "trigger laws" are in force.

Although the argument on which this judgment is based - "the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion" - may sound rather primitive, the full text of the judgment and its reasoning is 213 pages in small print. The main idea is that there is no constitutional basis for denying the legislatures of each state the freedom to decide on abortion. Thus, in states such as New York, California and more than 30 others, abortion will continue to be permitted as before.

But it is precisely in those US states where no change is expected, as elsewhere in the world where abortion is a routine medical procedure, that the loudest protests against this Supreme Court ruling are being heard. Why? It is seen as a major turning point in the ideological struggle not only in the US but in the whole world.

Almost half a century of struggle by the pro-life movement to ban abortion, if not completely, then to restrict it substantially, has produced its first positive results. While pro-life campaigners are calling for this victory not to be the endpoint and for the fight to continue, pro-choice campaigners are trying to whip up as much hysteria as possible by presenting this Supreme Court ruling as a global ban on abortion.

The main bone of contention, which has long been extremely principled in the US, is this: from which perspective to view this controversial case? Pro-choice advocates focus on a woman's right to decide for herself about her own body, while pro-life advocates focus on the fact that human life is inviolable, but life itself is created at the moment of fertilization. Abortion is therefore murder in any case, regardless of whether the fetus has already developed limbs, a heartbeat or any other signs of being human.

The problem is that the warring sides do not want to see or hear the other side's point of view (let alone arguments). One side keeps repeating “my body, my choice”, the other side - “every life is precious” and both sides will hear nothing else.

How will the US Supreme Court ruling affect the situation in Latvia? Hardly at all on the abortion issue, because in Latvia this issue has never been on the political agenda. There are no political forces in Latvia that would seriously advocate a ban on abortion or even a significant restriction on it. In Latvia, the issue of abortion does not occupy nearly the same public attention as it does in the USA, where pro-life activists are not passive blockers of the legalization of abortion, but militant uncompromising fighters for its prohibition. There are regular pickets and demonstrations outside medical facilities where abortions are performed, and doctors who perform abortions are subjected to various forms of social harassment (within the law). Just as or even more aggressive are those who are pro-choice, who protest incessantly and shout abusive slogans outside the homes of Supreme Court judges they do not like.

In Latvia, public conservatism usually takes more passive forms, and even the online collection of signatures in support of "natural families" is slow. The absurd ruling of the Constitutional Court on November 12, 2020, that a woman can receive paternity (!) allowance for a child born to another woman was met with relatively muted condemnation. The Latvian public sphere is dominated by leftist activists and the mainstream public assumed, without looking very deeply, that supporting the judgment (or at least not opposing it) counted as modern, progressive and "right". Many did so, believing that the Constitutional Court's lawyers were smart enough to be trusted. She probably knows what she is doing.

The fact that the US Supreme Court has delivered a judgment that the leftist "intellectuals" (in quotation marks, because here the term is used in the worst sense of the word) consider catastrophic; a dark day in US history; going back 150 years; the triumph of backwardness, etc., means only one thing for Latvia: if the Supreme Court of a legally advanced country like the US can deliver a judgment that the Washington political class considers a "grave error", why should our Constitutional Court, ready to bend on all sides, be considered a paragon of legal excellence? Just as well not only the judgment of November 12, 2020, can be considered a "grave error", a "dark day" in the history of Latvia, etc., but also future judgments that will try to usurp the rights of the Saeima.

I reiterate the conclusion of the US Supreme Court: The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.

At its deepest core, the US Supreme Court's decision is not about abortion at all, but about the fact that a country's judicial branch cannot usurp the legislative branch, as the US Supreme Court once did in a political conjuncture and, more recently, as our Constitutional Court tried to do in its judgment of November 12, 2020. The US Supreme Court's judgment of June 24 also sends a signal to our Constitutional Court: do not get carried away and overstep the powers given to you by the Constitution.