LOCAL NEWS
With Roe precedent gone, legal challenges will continue says former AG
Jul 15, 2022, 11:50 AM
Photo by David McNew
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, there’ve been individual cases across the nation that’ve been affected by the decision.
Former Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna joined Dave Ross on Seattle’s Morning News and said the Supreme Court’s position is that reproductive rights are “up to the states whether to make abortion illegal and under what circumstances or not or whether to allow abortion to be legal.”
The topic comes in light of a pregnant woman getting a ticket after driving in an HOV lane last week.
But McKenna said the Supreme Court didn’t create personhood for unborn children, so the final decision on the matter will have to go through Texas law.
A codified Roe first requires the constitutional right to privacy, former AG explains
Arizona has already attempted to create personhood for an unborn fetus.
“They already had a statute on the books. It was to trigger a law attempting to create a personhood status for unborn children, apparently from the moment of conception, and it’s been enjoined, so temporarily prevented from taking effect because the court said ‘look, it’s too vague,'” McKenna said.
“On its face, the statute would appear to result in a homicide statute in the state applying for an emergency abortion or an abortion for a severe traumatic genetic abnormality,” McKenna continued.
The Arizona statute, McKenna told Ross, says that a cause of action won’t be created against a woman for indirectly hurting the child by failing to “properly care for herself or failing to follow any particular program prenatal care.”
“It doesn’t cover the possibility that a woman may take prescribed medication for an illness, such as Lupus or cancer, that could have an effect on her unborn child,” McKenna said.
With so many changes to precedents coming from the Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson, we will continue to see legal challenges and questions brought up for the foreseeable future.
