Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

• Central European University: CEU

• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Podcast Company: scopeaudio

Follow us on social media!

• Central European University: @CEU

• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @GVAGrad_AHDC

Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks! 

Glossary

Dobbs v. Jackson 

(24:03 or p.7 in the transcript)

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, legal decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2022 overturned two historic Supreme Court rulings, Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), which had respectively established and affirmed a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Specifically, Roe v. Wade had recognized a constitutional right to obtain an abortion before approximately the end of the second trimester of pregnancy (which the Court understood as the usual point of fetal viability). Caseyhad affirmed the “essential holding” of Roe, which it had described in part as “a recognition of the right of the woman to choose to have an abortion before viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the State.” As Caseyexplained, a state unduly interferes in the right to pre-viability abortion if its restrictions “impose…an undue burden on a woman’s ability to make this decision” or present “a substantial obstacle to the woman’s effective right to elect the procedure.” Notwithstanding Roe and Casey and other Supreme Court rulings reaffirming a constitutional right to pre-viability abortion, Mississippi, the state appellant in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, claimed that laws banning pre-viability abortion are not necessarily unconstitutional. States may “prohibit elective abortions before viability,” the state argued, “because nothing in constitutional text, structure, history, or tradition supports a right to abortion.” Dobbs drew national attention because it overturned nearly 50 years of judicial precedent and effectively enabled states to impose drastic restrictions on the availability of abortion and even to ban it completely. source