Kennedy: Supreme Court has historic chance to restore power to states in fight to defend unborn – Press releases

Look at Kennedy’s remarks here.

WASHINGTON – Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) Spoke in the Senate today on the Dobbs v Jackson case, where the Supreme Court will determine whether the ban on electoral abortions before viability is constitutional. The case gives the Supreme Court an opportunity to reaffirm the right of states to legislate to protect the lives of unborn children and the well-being of their mothers.

Key excerpts from Kennedy’s speech include:

“Mr.. Mr. President, we talk a lot in this Chamber about the least of us – about how we can protect and uplift the powerless. And that’s a good thing. I can’t imagine anyone who has less power than…” an unborn baby. Roe v. Wade is, of course, about abortion. We know that. But it is also about something else. Roe v. Wade is also about federalism. Roe v. Wade is also about the American people. Roe v. Wade is about whether a finite group of the managerial elite, and by the managerial elite I mean the stuck politicians, the bureaucracy, the media, the academics, the corporate swindlers – all of them think they are smarter and more virtuous than the American people – should have the right to make moral choices for the American people rather than the American people making those choices for themselves. That is what Roe v. Wade is all about. “

“I am for life. I’m anti-roe against Wade. . . . But, Mr. President, even electoral lawyers who believe in legalized on-demand abortion understand – as does any sincere person familiar with a law book from a J. Crew catalog – that Roe v. Wade one of the strongest is arbitrary, it is one of the ad hoc decisions, one of the least reasoned decisions in the history of the United States. “

“Anyone, Mr. President, who knows a book of law from a J. Crew catalog also knows that there is absolutely no basis – not in the text, not in the structure, not in the history, not in the tradition of the constitution – for … a constitutional right to abortion, and certainly not on the basis of a floating general right to privacy that is not enshrined in the constitution. “

“In the Dobbs case, which the United States Supreme Court is about to hear, the United States Supreme Court has a really rare opportunity to say, as Judge Scalia wrote in one of its statements, value judgments made on behalf of people, should be voted on. ”dictated by these people and not Washington DC. . . That is why we are allowed to vote, and that is why we have elected representatives – who often vote on our behalf – elected representatives who can also be voted out if we do not like their vote. “

“In Dobbs, the Supreme Court has a rare opportunity to de-federalize and deconstitutionalize abortion and return the problem to the states where it was before Roe v. Wade.”

“The United States Supreme Court in Dobbs has no opportunity – and this is important – to say, ‘No right to abortion in America.’ Let me say that again because some of the Roe v. Wade, I think, hid the truth about it. The question before the Supreme Court and Dobbs is not the right to abortion. The question for the Supreme Court in Dobbs is which political forum is appropriate for these value judgments: is it the government or the people? And I hope, Mr. President, the United States Supreme Court will take advantage of this rare opportunity before him. “

At the heart of the Dobbs case is the Mississippi Gestational Age Act, a state law that prohibits abortions after 15 weeks of gestation, except in medical emergencies.

Currently, the US is one of seven nations, including human rights abusers like North Korea and China, that allow optional abortions for children older than 20 weeks of gestation.

This summer, Kennedy, along with more than 200 lawmakers, filed an amicus brief supporting Mississippi in the Dobbs case.

The video of Kennedy’s comments is available here.

https://www.kennedy.senate.gov/public/press-releases?ID=A61AB8A3-BF82-4B55-9800-294906F71F91