Roe v. Wade Motion: What Really Happened? ...(continued from here, please comment back at original post)

How the nine Supreme Court judges voted on this is confidential information I’m not allowed to divulge. However I am able to share a few very telling details, directly from the attorneys representing Norma McCorvey:

1. The justices decided to not hear the arguments made. They did not reject the arguments, since they didn’t even read or consider them. This means the arguments can be used again (see below).
   
   
2. Norma McCorvey could file an appeal to the High Court within 25 days, but it’s not likely.
   
   
3. The justices would have had to take up and consider not only Roe v. Wade but also Doe v. Bolton, the companion case, if they’d decided to consider Roe v. Wade at all. Therefore, they would not do that, since Doe v. Bolton still is being considered by the judge in the lower court, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana.
   
   
4. Roe v. Wade was not reaffirmed this time. (This was done in 1992, although then the justices weakened the “right to privacy” so it was not an absolute right. That allowed positive developments such as 24-hour waiting periods.) Perhaps there may have been enough votes to hear the case, but if the other justices told those “voting for” that no matter what, they’d vote against overturning, then in that case the court would have been forced to reaffirm it since they’d accepted the case at all.
   
   So it is very significant that they did not reaffirm it.
   
   
5. • Any state that wants to can pass a law to ban abortion (all or some of it). The pro-choice www.feminist.org site wrote last year that there are 30 states that indicated that if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned, they would pass laws to ban abortion: "21 states are at high risk of banning abortion, with nine other states at middle risk...18 states still have laws completely or partially banning abortion." South Dakota already came within one vote of passing such a law.
     
     What would happen, most likely, is that the lower courts would strike the law down (some already have), then the states would appeal up through the court channels all the way to the Supreme Court, thus reintroducing the arguments that we put forth which were not considered by the high court. This has already been done successfully elsewhere (see below).
     
     
   • It’s likely the states won’t do anything like this until after the Doe v. Bolton case has gone through the Supreme Court. We just got word that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge in Louisiana denied that motion (as expected), allowing the case to move on to the next level. He’s been holding onto it for quite some time, a year or more, in deference to the Roe case proceeding to the Supreme Court. Word is that this judge favors our motion, but as with the Roe motion, it cannot possibly be decided by a lower court when it will just be appealed and sent up to the high court in the end anyway. The lower courts can’t be the final arbiters and usurp the high court’s final say, so they don’t bother to do so.
     
     So the Sandra Cano (Doe v. Bolton) motion now will be appealed back to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, and after that will go to the U.S. Supreme Court. The whole process will take another one and a half to two years, maybe more.
     
     
   • Getting back to the states passing laws that then get appealed up to the Supreme Court: history can repeat itself. The NAACP, led by Thurgood Marshall and Charles Houston, peppered the nine Supreme Court justices from 1935 through 1954, almost 20 years, with case after case after case to overturn the racial segregation “right” that was created by the high court’s Plessy v. Ferguson case. They just kept filing more and more cases, until the critical mass of change had been reached incrementally and Brown v. Board of Education came along and finally achieved justice.
     
     From the website of The Just Beginning Foundation (about the contribution of African Americans to the federal judiciary):

     "The N.A.A.C.P.'s strategy for reaching its goals in education began by trying to undo the 1896 decision of Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 (163 U.S. 537), in which the Supreme Court said that segregation was valid if it was 'separate but equal.' The N.A.A.C.P.'s. legal committee decided that the only way to accomplish meaningful change was to attack Plessy. Initially the goal was to demonstrate that the state which created separate school systems never, in fact, created "equal" systems. Eventually, this changed to a frontal assault on Plessy: separate was inherently unequal.
     
     "In 1935, Charles Houston suggested that the N.A.A.C.P. adopt a strategy of litigating planned test cases to secure favorable legal precedents, thereby laying the foundation for later, fuller attacks on racial discrimination and segregation. The cases were to have a "sharply defined legal issue" that could be "supported by demonstrable evidence."

     Imagine those 30 states, at some point at, before or after Doe v. Bolton reaches the Supreme Court, passing abortion bans that get struck down and then peppering the Supreme Court ultimately over the next 20 years. Imagine a critical mass being reached where the justices finally acknowledge the facts of which Judge Edith Jones spoke when she wrote the decision to pass Roe v. Wade on up to the Supreme Court.
     
     Just because Norma McCorvey is pretty much done pursuing this, does not mean it cannot be overturned at all. In fact, a Supreme Court decision is more often than not overturned from pressure brought by the states or groups like the NAACP, not by the original plaintiff.
     
     The more challenges there are by the states (and by individuals in the form of personal letters) over the next few decades, now that the facts have been amassed, the more hope we have of correcting the injustices done to us women and to our children.
   
   
6. Lastly, I found it interesting that CBS News has asked one of our ladies for a promo tape and has interview footage tape from outside the court the day the motion was declined to be kept in their library for future use.