BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – It’s a historical day, change has come to America’s abortion laws. Questions remain following Friday’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding Roe v. Wade.
The U.S. Supreme Court justices say you don’t have the right to privacy, which causes the overturn of Roe V. Wade. Nora Ahmed with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that is incorrect.
“Now that we have this decision in place, we can start to attack those privacy rights that have been founded within the realm of substantive due process and that’s extraordinarily scary but I will also go and say that it is also wrong,” said Ahmed.
She believes the Supreme Court justices leaving it up to the states is only going to create a bigger issue for minorities.
“And as to redistricting maps here in Louisiana, so this is not a decision that stands alone. And it’s not simple enough to say we’ll leave it to the states,” said Ahmed. “If the states don’t provide the people with the right to actually freely and fairly elect their representatives, that’s hollow. A position is being taken that gives Black people the opportunity to elect their representatives is equivalent to something similar to segregation or racial gerrymandering.”
Louisiana now has some of the strictest abortion laws in place, making it almost impossible to have an abortion unless it will save the mother’s life. Ken Levy, a law professor at LSU said this is a concern for people who may have a miscarriage.
“They miscarry through no fault of their own,” said Levy. “While many of those in these red states now are going to be criminally investigated because there’s going to be a question of whether they genuinely miscarried or they try to bring the fetus. And so they are going to have two tragedies.”
Levy said there are even going to be doctors who refuse to help women who miscarry because they will not want to have to go to court as well. He said there are things that the president and Congress can do.
“Congress could, in principle, pass a law that would restore the rights,” said Levy.
Meanwhile, the Louisiana ACLU said this ruling is a major setback.
“This opinion stands to dismantle so much of what the United States means to the people who live here,” said Ahmed. “Definitely in a state of fear and we are definitely rolling back the clock on everything that there is for us in this country.”