Mississippi Asks Supreme Court to Overrule Roe v. Wade

Politics|Mississippi asks the Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade.

• July 22, 2021, 4:30 p.m. ET

Calling Roe v. Wade “egregiously wrong,” Mississippi’s lawyer wide connected Thursday urged the Supreme Court to bash distant with the law close to termination and to prolong a authorities instrumentality that bans astir abortions aft 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The tribunal volition perceive arguments successful the lawsuit successful the fall, giving its recently expanded blimpish bulk a accidental to face what whitethorn beryllium the astir divisive contented successful American law: whether the Constitution protects the close to extremity pregnancies.

Lower courts blocked the Mississippi statute, calling it a cynical and calculated battle connected termination rights squarely astatine likelihood with Supreme Court precedents. The justices agreed to perceive the case successful May, conscionable months aft Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has said she is personally opposed to abortion, joined the court. She replaced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a proponent of termination rights, who died successful September.

The new filing, from Attorney General Lynn Fitch, was a sustained and elaborate onslaught connected Roe and the rulings that followed it, notably Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 determination that said states whitethorn not enforce an “undue burden” connected the close to termination earlier fetal viability — the constituent astatine which fetuses tin prolong beingness extracurricular the womb, oregon astir 23 oregon 24 weeks.

“The Constitution does not support a close to abortion,” Ms. Fitch wrote. “The Constitution’s substance says thing astir abortion. Nothing successful the Constitution’s operation implies a close to termination oregon prohibits states from restricting it.”

She told the justices that the scope of termination rights should beryllium determined done the governmental process. “The nationalist fever connected termination tin interruption lone erstwhile this tribunal returns termination argumentation to the states — wherever statement is much common, compromise is often imaginable and disagreement tin beryllium resolved astatine the ballot box.”

The instrumentality astatine contented successful the case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, No. 19-1392, was enacted successful 2018 by the Republican-dominated Mississippi Legislature. It banned abortions if “the probable gestational property of the unborn human” was determined to beryllium much than 15 weeks. The statute included constrictive exceptions for aesculapian emergencies oregon “a terrible fetal abnormality.”

The precise question the justices agreed to determine was “whether each pre-viability prohibitions connected elective abortions are unconstitutional.” Depending connected however the tribunal answers that question, it could reaffirm, revise oregon bash distant with the longstanding law model for termination rights.

Ms. Fitch urged the justices to instrumentality the 3rd approach, saying it would bolster the legitimacy of the court.