Three Republican senators are leading an amicus brief to the supreme court urging the justices to overturn the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade. Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas filed a brief with the Supreme Court on Tuesday in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
In the filed brief, the senators urge that the court should overturn its ruling in two abortion-related cases: Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey and the landmark case Roe v. Wade.
“This status quo is untenable. Where a legal doctrine has repeatedly failed to offer clarity – where it has proved unworkable in the past and will likely engender unpredictable consequences in the future — its existence constitutes an open invitation to judges to interpret it according to their own policy preferences, usurping the constitutional prerogatives of the legislature,” the senators wrote in the brief.
“Roe and Casey should be overruled, and the question of abortion legislation should be returned to the states,” they continued. According to the senators’ joint press release, they argue in the brief that the Supreme Court’s “abortion jurisprudence finds no basis in the Constitution” and that the court’s “‘undue burden’ standard in particular has resulted in contradictory outcomes, disarray in the lower courts, and judicial lawmaking.”
