Sen. John Cornyn Compares Reversing Roe v. Wade To Segregation
A day after the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, which gave people the constitutional right to abortion for nearly 50 years, a Texas senator is going viral for comparing it to a previous ruling on segregation.
Texas Senator John Cornyn responded to a tweet by former president Barack Obama that denounced the Roe decision. Cornyn, an avid anti-abortionist, responded: "Now do Plessy vs Ferguson/Brown vs Board of Education."
It isn’t exactly clear what Cornyn meant by his tweet. Some believe he was suggesting the SCOTUS reverse the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ruled that segregated schools needed to integrate.
Others think he was referring to Plessy v. Ferguson establishing precedent only to be overturned by Brown half a century later. If so, the comparison is puzzling considering Roe, similar to Brown, established rights for people, while its reversal removed them.
Regardless, Cornyn followed up his original tweet in an attempt to clear it up.
The development comes nearly five decades after the landmark Roe v. Wade decision made it legal to terminate a pregnancy, sparking a feverish debate that touched on issues ranging from health care to politics.
Writing the court's majority opinion overturning Roe, Justice Samuel Alito summarized what the decision essentially means:
"The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,” Alito declared.
With the new decision, abortion access will now be decided at the state level. Politicians in some states like New York and California have promised to keep the right to an abortion unchanged, while other states like Missouri, Mississippi, and Texas, “trigger laws” have already outlawed the procedure.
