The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, the notorious 1973 decision that wrote abortion rights into law. Critics of the court’s new ruling overlook a crucial fact: By throwing out one of the most anti-democratic court decisions in the past 100 years, the justices have upheld the democratic process.

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court finally acknowledged what was readily evident back in 1973: Roe was an illegitimate decision in which seven justices simply created a nonexistent constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Roe was an ideological decision, an exercise in judicial policymaking with no basis in the law. Rather, it was a sad example of the court acting as a super-legislature to override the views of the public and their elected legislators in the states.

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