More than 200 Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have signed on to an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court asking justices to revisit the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in all 50 states.
In their amicus brief, 39 GOP senators and 166 House Republicans said that the ruling should be “reconsidered” because the standard by which the 1973 court decided the issue is “unworkable.”
The brief said the principles in the case contained “ambiguity” and has been construed by lower courts inconsistently.
Two Democrats—Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-Ill.)—also signed the brief.
“Forty-six years after Roe was decided, it remains a radically unsettled precedent,” the lawmakers wrote in their brief.
The lawmakers said that the principles applied in Roe were “haphazard from the beginning” and that the justices in the case only implied that there was a ‘fundamental’ constitutional right to abortion.
“Instead, the court only required that regulations be ‘reasonably relate[d]’ to the State’s interest and ‘tailored to the recognized state interests,’” they wrote.
“The cases decided since did not consistently treat abortion as a ‘fundamental right’ and did not consistently apply strict scrutiny.”
In truth, the right to an abortion is not an issue in the case, which is cited as June Medical Services LLC v Gee, where the brief was filed, The Epoch Times reported.
That case involves a challenge to a 2014 Louisiana law, Act 620, requiring doctors who perform ambitions to have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of where the procedure takes place.
The federal lawmakers’ brief is in support of Dr. Rebekah Gee in her official capacity as head of the Louisiana Department of Health.
The state argued that the admitting privileges were necessary to protect patients’ health and safety.
However, June Medical Services and two doctors argued that the law’s requirement imposes an “undue burden” on women seeking an abortion.
The New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the state law after determining it was constitutional. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in October and is set to hear oral arguments in March. A decision is expected by June.
The brief comes after a separate filing by 200 Democrats asking the high court to strike down the Louisiana law.