Oklahoma Senate Democratic Leader Kay Floyd denounces Supreme Court overturning ‘Roe v. Wade’
Oklahoma City — Senate Democratic Leader Kay Floyd, D-Oklahoma City, denounced the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, announced on Friday (June 25) to overturn “Roe v. Wade”.
Below is Sen. Floyd’s statement, sent to CapitolBeatOK.com and other news organizations:
“I am outraged by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The court’s radical and wrongly decided opinion not only takes away fundamental constitutional rights but also seriously endangers the health of women all across our country.
“Unfortunately, the relentless assault on women’s reproductive rights in Oklahoma began long before today’s decision and we should expect it to continue.
“Now we must channel our anger and sorrow into determination and peaceful but forceful action. Women have an inalienable right to make their own personal decisions regarding their medical care. We will always stand up and fight for this right and we will not be silenced.”
Background of the ‘Dobbs’ case and the ‘Roe’ reversal
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) was a 7-2 decision in which a U.S. Supreme Court majority concluded the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment triggered a fundamental right to privacy protecting access to abortion.
The decision was among the three or four most controversial U.S. Supreme Court decisions in history.
In the 1992 decision “Planned Parenthood v. Casey“, the court reaffirmed the core of Roe but ended the “trimester” framework that Justice Harry Blackmun, author of the Roe decision, had developed in 1973.
Roe v. Wade, companion case “Doe v. Bolton” and “Casey” have been analyzed and criticized in legal cases and scholarly analyses throughout the half-century since Roe reversed abortion laws in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
After granting judicial review in a Mississippi case known as “Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,” the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on June 24.
The majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito said that the U.S. Constitution “does not confer a right to abortion.”
The Court majority further ruled that “the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”