Poli Alert Political & Civics
Related Articles
In a brief filed last week, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch urged the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that ruled that the Constitution protects a pregnant person’s right to have an abortion.
In the brief, Fitch called Roe and further abortion-related rulings, most notably Planned Parenthood v. Casey, “egregiously wrong” and argued they recognize a right with no actual Constitutional basis.
“Roe and Casey are unprincipled decisions that have damaged the democratic process, poisoned our national discourse, plagued the law — and, in doing so, harmed this Court,” the brief says.
“Nothing constitutional text, structure, history, or tradition supports a right to abortion.”
The case at the center of Fitch’s brief, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, revolves around Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The Supreme Court agreed to review the case in May.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the fall. The Court took the case to decide “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”
“In an unbroken line dating to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s abortion cases have established (and affirmed, and reaffirmed) a woman’s right to choose an abortion before viability,” Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham wrote in an opinion.
“If Roe falls, half the states in the country are poised to ban abortion entirely,” Nancy Northup, President, and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights said. “Women of child-bearing age in the U.S. have never known a world in which they don’t have this basic right, and we will keep fighting to make sure they never will.”
“Their goal is for the Supreme Court to take away our right to control our own bodies and our own futures — not just in Mississippi, but everywhere,” Northup said.
The Supreme Court’s next term begins in October, with a ruling in the Dobbs case likely coming sometime in 2022. The Court’s ruling could reaffirm Roe and Casey, hollow them out, or overturn them altogether.
