|
 Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, a Republican, said in
papers filed with the court that the Roe v. Wade ruling and a
subsequent 1992 decision that affirmed it were both "egregiously
wrong" and that state legislatures should have more leeway to
restrict abortion. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority.
The filing marked the first time that Mississippi, in seeking to
revive a restrictive state abortion law blocked by lower courts,
made overturning Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide
and ended an era in which some states had banned the procedure, a
central part of its argument.
"It is time for the court to set this right and return this
political debate to the political branches of government," Fitch
added in a statement.
Mississippi is one of numerous Republican-governed states in recent
years to have passed ever-more-restrictive abortion laws.
The court in May agreed https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-takes-up-case-that-could-limit-abortion-rights-2021-05-17
to take up the Mississippi case and will hear it in its term that
begins in October. The justices are likely to hear oral arguments in
November, with a ruling due by the end of June 2022.
"If Roe falls, half the states in the country are poised to ban
abortion entirely. 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," said Nancy Northup,
president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is among
those challenging Mississippi's law.
Mississippi's Republican-backed 2018 law bans abortion after 15
weeks of pregnancy. Lower courts ruled against the law, which
legislators enacted with full knowledge that it was a direct
challenge to Roe v. Wade.
[to top of second column] |
 It has been a longstanding aim of religious
conservatives to overturn Roe v. Wade, which
recognized that a constitutional right to
personal privacy protects a woman's ability to
obtain an abortion. The court in its 1992
decision, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern
Pennsylvania v. Casey, reaffirmed the ruling and
prohibited laws that place an "undue burden" on
a woman's ability to obtain an abortion.
 Roe v. Wade said that states could not ban
abortion before the viability of the fetus
outside the womb, which is generally viewed by
doctors as between 24 and 28 weeks. The
Mississippi law would ban abortion much earlier
than that. Other states have backed laws that
would ban the procedure even earlier.
Abortion opponents are hopeful the Supreme Court
will narrow or overturn Roe v. Wade. The court's
conservative majority includes the addition last
year of Republican former President Donald
Trump's third appointee, Justice Amy Coney
Barrett. She replaced liberal Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, an abortion rights champion who died
in September.
After the only abortion clinic in Mississippi,
Jackson Women's Health Organization, sued to
block the 15-week ban, a federal judge in 2018
ruled against the state. The New Orleans-based
5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2019
reached the same conclusion.
The Supreme Court in a 5-4 June 2020 ruling
struck down a Louisiana law that imposed
restrictions on doctors who perform abortions.
Ginsburg was still on the court at the time and
conservative Chief Justice John Roberts voted
with the court's liberal wing in the ruling.
Roberts, however, made it clear that he voted
that way because he felt bound by the court's
2016 ruling striking down a similar Texas law.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will
Dunham)
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