|
 "The fallout would be swift and certain. As abortion bans are
enforced - or the threat of enforcement looms - large swaths of the
South and Midwest would likely be without access to legal abortion,"
said lawyers for Jackson Women's Health Organization, the only
abortion clinic in Mississippi.
"People would be harmed, and chaos would ensue, even in states that
claim not to be prohibiting abortion directly," the lawyers added.
The court filing came in response to Mississippi Attorney General
Lynn Fitch, a Republican, who said in papers filed with the court in
July that the Roe v. Wade ruling and a subsequent 1992 decision that
affirmed it were both "egregiously wrong."
The court has a 6-3 conservative majority.
Mississippi's July court filing marked the first time that the
Republican-governed state, in seeking to revive a law blocked by
lower courts, made overturning Roe v. Wade a central part of its
argument. The 1973 ruling ended an era in which some states had
banned abortion.
"Unless the court is to be perceived as representing nothing more
than the preferences of its current membership, it is critical that
judicial protection hold firm absent the most dramatic and
unexpected changes in law or fact," lawyers for the Mississippi
clinic said.
The Supreme Court's central role in the fight over abortion rights
was highlighted on Sept. 1. In a late-night decision, the court
allowed a Texas law that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy
to stay in effect, setting off a firestorm of criticism https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-declines-block-texas-abortion-ban-2021-09-02
from abortion rights advocates.
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. Oral arguments have not yet been scheduled, with
a ruling due by the end of June 2022.
[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 terminate a
pregnancy. 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, enacted
in 2018, would ban abortion much earlier than that. Other states
like Texas have backed laws that would ban it even earlier.
After Jackson Women's Health Organization sued to block the 15-week
ban, a federal judge in 2018 ruled against Mississippi. The New
Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2019 reached the
same conclusion.
The Supreme Court in 2016 and 2020 struck down restrictive abortion
laws in Texas and Louisiana, but new justices appointed by
Republican former President Donald Trump have moved the court
further rightward.
The court's conservative majority includes the addition last year of
Trump's third appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who during her
Senate confirmation hearings declined to call Roe v. Wade a
"super-precedent" invulnerable to being overturned. Barrett replaced
liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an abortion rights champion who
died last year.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
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