When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it claimed to be removing the judiciary from the abortion debate. In reality, it simply gave the courts a macabre new task: deciding how far states can push a patient toward death before allowing her to undergo an emergency abortion.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit offered its own answer, declaring that Texas may prohibit hospitals from providing “stabilizing treatment” to pregnant patients by performing an abortion—withholding the procedure until their condition deteriorates to the point of grievous injury or near-certain death.

The ruling proves what we already know: Roe’s demise has transformed the judiciary into a kind of death panel that holds the power to elevate the potential life of a fetus over the actual life of a patient.

    • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      I mean, with asterisks? The Catholics only get away with that because they reject Sola Scriptura, and sometimes treat some of the words of their Church Fathers as “the next best thing”. Even then, they’ve gone back and forth on abortion (and largely treated it as a minor issue) until only the last few centuries.

      …but along those lines, I’ve never really seen a Catholic argument against abortion try to lean too heavily on Biblical sources. Because they know they’d lose.