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Femi-List: SCOTUS Edition

1. Catch me up: On March 2nd, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on its biggest abortion case in decades, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. Long story short: Texas passed medically unnecessary, ridiculous laws to restrict abortion access. Clinics sued. Now, the Supreme Court is stepping in. 

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2. So, is Texas for real? Samantha Bee went digging, and found that Texas state Rep. Dan Flynn, one of the authors of the initial bill, doesn’t actually know how abortions work. Shocker. 

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3. Yeah, this is ridiculous: President of Planned Parenthood Cecile Richards isn’t having any of Texas’s hypocrisy. Because if a state does everything it can to stop you from getting a safe abortion, do you really have that right at all? 

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4. Thank God for Notorious RBG: Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagan weren’t having it either. During oral arguments, they tore apart Texas’s argument and stood up for women’s reproductive rights. Can we fill up the Supreme Court entirely with women?

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When the Supreme Court last heard oral arguments in a landmark abortion case, it was April 1992, the case was Planned Parenthood v Casey, and Sandra Day O’Connor was the lone female justice.

Twenty-four years later, there are three women on the court. And if you count Justice Stephen Breyer as one of history’s great feminists —and I do — then you can view the arguments in this term’s landmark abortion case, Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt, as creating a neat 4–4 split. On one side, you have a group of testy male justices needling a female lawyer for Texas clinics about whether it was even appropriate for them to hear this appeal. On the other, you’ve got four absolutely smoking hot feminists pounding on Texas’ solicitor general for passing abortion regulations that have no plausible health purpose and also seem pretty stupid.

“The Women Take Over,” Dahlia Lithwick

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Yes, an enormous difference….When Sandra left, I was all alone…. Now Kagan is on my left, and Sotomayor is on my right. So we look like we’re really part of the court and we’re here to stay. Also, both of them are very active in oral arguments. They’re not shrinking violets. It’s very good for the schoolchildren who parade in and out of the court to see.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on whether having three women justices has made a difference.

Read the entire ellemagazine interview: here