The board members of Democratic Jewish Outreach PA (DJOP) said today that every Pennsylvanian who values the rights of women “should be outraged that the US Supreme Court, for the first time in its history, has withdrawn a constitutionally protected right recognized for nearly a half century — the right for women to be free of government interference in important health care decisions that properly should remain between her, her family and her doctor.”
Jill Zipin, DJOP Chair, said that each of the justices nominated by former President Donald Trump testified before Congress that Roe vs. Wade was a “precedent.” But each offered conditional language indicating that they might vote against Roe vs. Wade.
“It is the height of deceit that Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett used the word ’precedent’ in their nomination testimony, but at the first opportunity voted against Roe Vs. Wade,” Zipin said.
“We are not surprised, but this decision leaves us more committed than ever to electing Josh Shapiro as Governor, Austin Davis as Lt. Governor and John Fetterman to the US Senate,” Zipin added. “If the Pennsylvania legislature remains under Republican control, the election of Shapiro, Davis and Fetterman will be our only means of protecting the rights of women and the rights of others who might come under attack from this regressive Supreme Court majority.”
Zipin said the impact of today’s decision will fall most heavily on poor women in Republican-controlled states, where legislators will move swiftly to ban abortion, sometimes without exception.
“We Pennsylvanians cannot afford to be complacent,” she said. “Republican-dominated legislators hardly can wait to pass legislation to seriously restrict abortion in the Commonwealth. They are poised to act. If the legislature stays Republican, only the veto pen of a Democratic governor will stand between a draconian anti-abortion law and the rights of women in Pennsylvania. This makes the election of Nov. 2022 critically important.”