The court has handled complex technical issues many times before. This, along with partisanship, is nothing new.
If they had truly taken a partisan stance, they would have unilaterally decided to ban abortion based on specious reasoning not unlike Roe.
Majority rule is the most partisan thing.
It doesn't take a genius to forsee a standoff between Red and Blue.
It reminds me of the famous clip in Monthy Python: "what have the Romans ever done for us".
The US federal and state governments exist strictly at the pleasure of the people and it's written in our Declaration of Independence that we can and will get rid of them all at a moment's notice if they stop enjoying the people's pleasure.
That the Articles of Confederation got canned was a demonstration of the people's power to get rid of government that failed to garner pleasure.
Stuff like our Bill of Rights exist because, yes, we fucking distrust and hate our government so much we felt a need to codify our resentment.
If one party believes something to be an individual right and another party believes it to be a matter for collective/state decision, then no.
(Not that the Democratic party fully sees abortion as an individual right of the mother - after all, the Roe v. Wade decision did not really consider it as such, nor did it legitimize abortion throughout the pregnancy term; and the Democratic party generally supports Roe v. Wade. It has also not tried to put the matter into federal legislation for the 40-odd years between Roe and Dobbs.)
Partisanship is not defined by "rightness" or "closeness to some notion of democracy", it's about closeness to a party line. Overturning Roe was a target of the Republican Party. They did it.
It's not just one decision, but would you provide support for that claim? Dobbs was decided by conservatives put on the court specifically to make that decision, which they executed promptly, along with other conservative priorities. Roe was decided by conservatives also, and they weren't put on the court to rule on abortion.
What doesn't make sense is taking a group of positions that were conservative in the 70's, carrying them into the current day after society has changed significantly, and then talking about them as if they still represent a slowing of change rather than a radical departure.
Roe was decided by the Burger court, which, according to Wikipedia, "is generally considered to be the last liberal court to date". It was heavily based on a Griswold v. Connecticut precedent by the Warren court, generally agreed to be the most liberal Supreme Court in US history. Both of these verdicts were and continue to be widely criticized by conservatives as being based on extremely dubious reasoning. I don't know what made you think that Roe was "decided by conservatives".
There is a lot historical revisionism involved around these issues, with many people making blatantly false claims, either lying, or being themselves mistaken. The result is that people who have not lived through it, or who have not studied the history diligently, are very much misled as to the facts, because the media, which is very good and active at correcting lies and falsehoods spread by conservatives, takes approximately zero efforts to correct falsehoods spread by liberals (often it in fact acts with clear intent of spreading misapprehensions, by selective reporting and careful omission of facts).
That's not a lock that they were in fact "conservative," but four of them were put on the court by Nixon, and regarding Blackmun, "The Justice Department including future Chief Justice William Rehnquist investigated Fortas at the behest of President Richard Nixon who saw the idea of removing Fortas as a chance to move the Court in a more conservative direction, and Attorney General John N. Mitchell pressured Fortas into resigning." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abe_Fortas
So four were appointed by Nixon, who specifically had in mind moving the court to a more conservative stance. The fact that he failed miserably with Blackmun notwithstanding, the only thing that can honestly be said of the court at the time is that it was less conservative than courts that followed, not that it was liberal.
Did he? Whether or not that was his intent is unclear
So yeah, seems pretty clear that he did.
Roe is criticized by liberals as well. I didn't realize how much of a stretch that decision was until it became front and center. I remain in favor of a codified Roe and, given how flimsy that ruling was and that they had plenty of chances to do so, I blame Democrats entirely for not doing so before this ruling. Especially given that it would generally be nationally popular to do so.
The cynic in me sees how popular Roe style abortion rules would be nationally and how much it was used as a fundraiser and wonders if Democrats simply didn't want to kill the golden goose.
And the idea they wouldn't do it anyway for fund-raising reasons is a disgraceful claim to make.
We are talking about modern politicians, aren't we?
I have read about America in the 1850s and there are some unsettling parallels.
2008.