When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it claimed to be removing the judiciary from the abortion debate. In reality, it simply gave the courts a macabre new task: deciding how far states can push a patient toward death before allowing her to undergo an emergency abortion.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit offered its own answer, declaring that Texas may prohibit hospitals from providing “stabilizing treatment” to pregnant patients by performing an abortion—withholding the procedure until their condition deteriorates to the point of grievous injury or near-certain death.
The ruling proves what we already know: Roe’s demise has transformed the judiciary into a kind of death panel that holds the power to elevate the potential life of a fetus over the actual life of a patient.
A constitutional amendment will never occur again, because it is an incredibly high bar to overcome even when the legislative process in the country isn’t as dysfunctional.
One party would need a super majority in both houses of Congress, where the bar is 2/3 but you’re probably going to need at least ten more than that to prevent the amendment from being scrapped by a contingent of Joe Liebermans.
Then that same party will need a majority in the state legislatures of 38 states to ratify the amendment.
It’s just not going to happen.