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Will the Supreme Court Overturn Roe v. Wade After All?

Protesters marching
Protesters marching
Louise Melling,
Deputy Legal Director and Director of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty,
勛圖眻畦
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December 17, 2018

This piece was originally published in .

When the Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear attempting to exclude Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers from their Medicaid programs, legal soothsayers were out in full force opining about what it means for the future of abortion rights under the newly constituted court.

The decision drew , Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito, who suggested that the court was ducking the cases because they involved Planned Parenthood and touched on abortion. But, intriguingly, the courts two other conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and the courts latest member, Brett Kavanaugh, sided with the courts liberals in rejecting the case.

What are we to make of it?

Its not easy to read the tea leaves here because the cases didnt pose a direct challenge to the constitutionality of abortion restrictions. Instead, they centered on whether those states could exclude Planned Parenthood from providing contraception and other health services in the Medicaid program. Those states object to Planned Parenthood providing access to abortion outside Medicaid, which does not cover the procedure. Had the court accepted the states arguments, tens of thousands of indigent women could have lost the health care they receive from the group.

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