READING COMPREHENSION Roe Vs Wade Overturned - Corrigé

Reading comprehension
The Supreme Court Decision That Defined Abortion Rights for Thirty Years
The centrist, compromising view of reproductive rights in Planned Parenthood v. Casey helped clear
the path to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The New Yorker, June 25, 2022
A protester at a pro-choice march in Washington, D.C., in May, 1992.Photograph by Alfred

Gescheidt / Getty
The joint dissent in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which a majority of the
Supreme Court decided to abolish the constitutional right to abortion, is an impassioned and
meticulous document. Written by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, it
itemizes all the familiar, but no less horrifying, likely consequences of the Court’s opinion: rape
survivors forced to bear their rapists’ children, prison terms for abortion providers, and bounty laws
that “turn neighbor against neighbor » in the effort to root out anyone who tries to get an abortion.”
It points toward a cascade of new legislation and court challenges that may result from the decision:
restrictions on interstate travel for abortion providers and patients, criminal sanctions on women
who seek abortions, the reversal of other Court decisions that safeguard liberty and equality, even a
federal ban on abortion. (The last of these will not seem far-fetched if Republicans win back Congress
and the White House in 2024.) “As of today,” the three dissenting Justices write, “this Court holds, a
State can always force a woman to give birth, prohibiting even the earliest abortions. A State can
thus transform what, when freely undertaken, is a wonder into what, when forced, may be a
nightmare.”
But the dissent in Dobbs has a blind spot, and it has to do with Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the case
decided in 1992 that revisited and revised Roe v. Wade. It is somewhat understandable that Casey
has not become synonymous with the American abortion debate in the same way that Roe did, or
that Dobbs will. After all, Casey neither established nor rescinded reproductive freedom for women
in America. But our vague, muddled grasp of Casey—and its vague, muddled wording—is integral to
its power: Casey’s role in emboldening anti-abortion activists and curtailing abortion rights unfolded
quietly and gradually, state by state, bill by bill. The decision epitomized a centrist, compromising
approach to bodily autonomy, one that ostensibly sought comity between opposing sides, but which
permitted the language, precepts, and assumptions of the anti-abortion movement to seep into the
mainstream discourse on reproductive rights. The road to Dobbs was cleared in part by Casey.
For nineteen years, up until the decision in Casey, Roe v. Wade held that the government had no
“compelling interest” in a pregnancy whatsoever during the first trimester, when the vast majority of
abortions are performed. Writing for the majority in Roe, Justice Harry Blackmun stated that, for
those first twelve or so weeks:
The attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without
regulation by the State, that, in his medical judgment, the patient’s pregnancy should be
terminated. If that decision is reached, the judgment may be effectuated by an abortion
free of interference by the State. With respect to the State’s important and legitimate
interest in potential life, the “compelling” point is at viability.
The language of Roe is regrettably patriarchal, as it casts the pregnant woman as a mere consultant
to the (male) physician. But the protective boundaries that Roe marked around reproductive
freedom were bright and unmistakable. The state had no business anywhere near abortion decisions
in the first trimester. It could only intervene in the second trimester in order to protect maternal
health. And, before viability, it could not restrict abortion for the purposes of “protecting fetal life.”
Roe was far from perfect, but it was, to a great extent, clear, definitive, quantifiable; Casey, with its
hazy, conciliatory talk of “undue burdens,” was not. Roe sought to make procuring an abortion as
frictionless as possible; Casey sought to uphold the right while allowing states to second-guess and
nitpick and means-test it within an inch of its life. (In the year that Casey was decided, Bill Clinton
made the prim slogan “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare” into a refrain of his Presidential
candidacy.) Roe shut the door before the second trimester; Casey opened it. And anti-abortion
advocates have been pushing through that door ever since, using legislative measures that have little
other pretense than to discourage, delay, and thwart abortion care. Reproductive freedom as a
constitutional right was not destroyed until Friday, but American jurisprudence had given quarter to
the anti-abortion side’s terms, its language, its version of history and precedent, for thirty years
already.
►1. What is a dissent. (cf. l.1)
►2. List the likely consequences of Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
- rape survivors forced to bear their rapists’ children,
- prison terms for abortion providers,
- bounty laws that “turn neighbor against neighbor » in the effort to root out anyone who tries to get an
abortion.”
►3. What new legislation could be introduced in the wake of Dobbs vs Jackson?
 restrictions on interstate travel for abortion providers and patients,
 criminal sanctions on women who seek abortions,
 the reversal of other Court decisions that safeguard liberty and equality, even a federal ban on
abortion.
►4 Vocabulary. Family of words. Fill the following table based on the first example given
NOUN VERB ADJECTIVE

A delay To delay Delaying/ delayed
An abortion
To defend
An appointment
caring
►5. What was ‘Planned Parenthood vs Casey’ and what is the main criticism waged by the
journalist against this decision?
Planned Parenthood vs Casey: 1992 SC ruling, supposedly reasserting abortion rights.

Criticism: PP vs C was too vague in its wording, too compromising which gave too much leeway to
anti-abortion activists
►6. what, according to the New Yorker, made Roe vs Wade an efficient protection of
reproductive freedom?
The fact that it denied the State any decision making power in the first trimester of a pregnancy and
limited State intervention during the second trimester to cases when maternal health was in danger.


►7. Discussion: Why is the push back on abortion happening now? What changed in the
political environment?

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Reading comprehension

The New Yorker, June 25, 2022

A protester at a pro-choice march in Washington, D.C., in May, 1992.Photograph by Alfred

►1. What is a dissent. (cf. l.1)

 restrictions on interstate travel for abortion providers and patients,

 criminal sanctions on women who seek abortions,

NOUN VERB ADJECTIVE

Planned Parenthood vs Casey: 1992 SC ruling, supposedly reasserting abortion rights.

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