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NAACP Legal Defense Fund Blasts Segregation-Abortion Comparisons

“An accurate command of American history makes clear that there is and should be no comparison between Roe and Plessy.”

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund issued a scathing statement Thursday on the comparison of the current abortion rights case before the Supreme Court to racial desegregation cases. Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said, “An accurate command of American history makes clear that there is and should be no comparison between Roe and Plessy… Roe recognized a fundamental right; Plessy was an affront to the very idea of universal individual rights and equality in the United States.” During oral arguments before the court this week in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which has the potential to overturn Roe v. Wade and half a century of case law on abortion rights, Mississippi’s solicitor general said the high court had reversed its decisions before, likening the current case to Brown v. Board of Education, which overruled Plessy v. Ferguson on segregation.