Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Case That May Slash Abortion Rights

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider gutting the constitutional right to abortion, agreeing to hear Mississippi’s bid to ban the procedure in almost all cases after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The move suggests the court’s strengthened conservative wing may be ready to roll back, if not overturn, the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationwide. The clash, which the court will hear in the nine-month term that starts in October, will be its first abortion case since Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed.

Mississippi’s appeal seeks to let states outlaw abortion even before a fetus becomes viable. That would eviscerate the core holding of the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruling, which said states can’t impose significant restrictions before viability. The court in Casey didn’t pinpoint when viability occurs but suggested it was around 23 or 24 weeks at the time of the ruling.

In its appeal, Mississippi argued that viability is “not an appropriate standard for assessing the constitutionality of a law regulating abortion.” The state says its ban was designed to protect maternal health as well as the life of the fetus.

“America cannot be a humane, civilized society if its courts preclude lawmakers from imposing reasonable limits on the taking of innocent life,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch argued.

Conservative states have been moving to sharply restrict abortion rights. So far in 2021 alone, states have enacted more than 60 new abortion restrictions, including near-total bans in Arkansas and Oklahoma, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that backs reproductive rights.

The 2018 law was challenged by the state’s only abortion facility, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

“In an unbroken line of decisions over the last fifty years, this court has held that the Constitution guarantees each person the right to decide whether to continue a pre-viability pregnancy,” the clinic argued in a brief that urged rejection of the appeal.

The Mississippi ban makes exceptions only in cases of severe fetal abnormality or major health risk to the woman. A federal district judge and then a federal appeals court said the ban was unconstitutional.

Mississippi has a separate law that bans abortion after 20 weeks and isn’t at issue in the Supreme Court appeal. The Jackson clinic provides abortions only through the 16th week of pregnancy.

The high court had deferred acting in the case since late September.

The case is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 19-1392.

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