White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has stated that she is not an economic expert.
She should probably add that she’s not a Constitutional scholar either.
During a news conference on Wednesday, the press secretary said, “From Day One when the Supreme Court made this extreme decision to take away a Constitutional right, it was an unconstitutional action by them.”
“[It was] a right that was around for almost 50 years. A right that women had to make a decision on their bodies and how they want to start their families,” she added.
Watch the video below:
Jean-Pierre says it was "unconstitutional" for SCOTUS to overturn Roe. pic.twitter.com/zQyzdZxRh8
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 3, 2022
What on God’s green earth is she talking about?
Roe v. Wade was not an amendment to the Constitution. It was not some federal law passed by Congress that was somehow immune from judicial review. It was not even some decision by the court that was immune from being reviewed. The court was well with its Constitutional authority to review this decision.
Roe and the later decision of Planned Parenthood v. Casey were based on unenumerated rights, meaning it is not explicitly listed in the Constitution.
So there was no explicit right to abortion which put it at risk of other justices interpreting the Constitution differently.
Just because a right is unenumerated does not mean it should just be tossed out. But as Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court’s decision overturning Roe, “Abortion is different because it destroys what Roe termed ‘potential life’ and what the law challenged in this case calls an ‘unborn human being.’ None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved the critical moral question posed by abortion.”
Additionally, the decision did not ban abortions nationwide — or at all.
Rather, the court took what is actually more a democratic step by handing power to voters to make decisions on the matter that will better represent the public opinion of their individual states.
And as we saw on Tuesday, voters in Kansas overwhelmingly defeated a measure that would have allowed lawmakers to ban abortion.
In fact, on Wednesday, Jean-Pierre noted that voters rejected that measure in Kansas and were working to “reclaim rights” that were “stolen from them.”
Karine Jean-Pierre on Kansas voters rejecting an amendment providing no right to an abortion: "In the wake of Dobbs, the president predicted people would turn out in record numbers to reclaim rights stolen from them…" pic.twitter.com/r7Tu47BSZ0
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 3, 2022
But just because you don’t like what the Supreme Court did and are very mad about it, that does not mean that its actions were unconstitutional. To say that they were recklessly undermines the credibility of an important and co-equal branch of government.
Perhaps Jean-Pierre should go back to trying to be a comedian if this is the alternative.
