Justice Sotomayor Warns of Political Consequences in Supreme Court Abortion Case: ‘Will This Institution Survive the Stench This Creates?’

As the Supreme Court presided over the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned of the potential ramifications if the decision is viewed to be tainted by politics.

The Jackson case gravitates around the question of whether it is constitutional for Mississippi to prohibit pre-viability elective abortions under state law. The case could have major repercussions for the Supreme Court’s previous rulings on Roe v. Wade and in Planned Parenthood v. Casey — landmark decisions that legally permit women to have an abortion in their first trimester without undue government intervention.

During the oral arguments Wednesday morning, Sotomayor spoke of how Jackson calls previous rulings into question in terms of when a fetus is believed viable enough to survive outside of the womb. Sotomayor also seemed to raise the possibility that the case is being mounted now because of court’s shifting ideological bent in recent years with the appointment of her colleagues: Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett by former President Donald Trump:

You want us to reject that right of viability and adopt something different. Fifteen justices over 50 years have, or I should say 30 since Casey, have reaffirmed that basic viability line. Four have said no, two of them members of this court. But 15 justices have said yes, of varying political backgrounds. Now the sponsors of this bill, the House bill in Mississippi, said we are doing it because we have new justices. The newest ban that Mississippi put in place, the six-week ban, the Senate sponsor said we’re doing it because we have new justices on the Supreme Court. Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the constitution and its reading are just political acts?

Listen above, via Fox News.