Professors Barry McDonald and Robert Pushaw Quoted in "A 'Catastrophe' or a 'New Era'? Legal Community Reacts as SCOTUS Rescinds Abortion Precedents" -- National Law Review

Professors Barry P. McDonald and Robert J. Pushaw are quoted in the National Law Journal article, "A 'Catastrophe' or a 'New Era'? Legal Community Reacts as SCOTUS Rescinds Abortion Precedents." The article surveys commentary from the legal community on the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

Excerpts from  "A 'Catastrophe' or a 'New Era'? Legal Community Reacts as SCOTUS Rescinds Abortion Precedents"

Barry McDonald, Pepperdine Caruso School of Law professor: “The majority in Dobbs relied mainly on the weak basis in the text and original meaning of the Constitution to eliminate a right to abortion. But if historical understandings are what matters, why is the Court contemporaneously expanding an individual gun right that most professional historians say is not in the Second Amendment?”

Robert Pushaw, Pepperdine Caruso School of Law professor: “Justice Alito’s opinion is legally persuasive.  The Constitution’s text does not contain a right to abortion.  Moreover,such a right should not be implied from the Fourteenth Amendment’s reference to “liberty” because no one who wrote, ratified, or implemented that Amendment understood it as including the freedom to have an abortion. Finally, the Constitution’s structure leaves deeply contested moral, social, and cultural issues like abortion to state-by-state democratic processes.”

The complete article may be found at National Law Review (registration required)