The Supreme Court is Deciding if They're Banning Abortion

The Supreme Court is about to vote on an abortion case that would invalidate Roe v. Wade and lead to a permanent ban on abortions. This is the case that we’ve all been afraid of. What’s worse is that given the court’s conservative supermajority, and the rulings they’ve already made this year supporting anti-abortion laws that were previously struck down, this is a very real and serious threat to abortion rights that we’ve been warning you about since 2016. 

This is their moment. The case is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and is a ruling on a 2018 Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks, but more importantly, the ruling challenges the specific protection created by the language in Roe. v Wade, and its subsequent holding in Planned Parenthood v. Casey that gives women the right to terminate their pregnancies “before viability”.

Basically, Roe v. Wade only allows elective abortion up 24 weeks, at which point it’s generally agreed that the fetus has reached the ability to live outside of the womb. But if the Supreme Court rules in favor of Mississippi it allows them to invalidate the words “before viability”. The question being posed to the court is “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional”, in other words, do laws that prohibit abortions at 15 weeks like in Mississippi, or even 6-weeks, before most women even know they’re pregnant, like in Texas and Georgia, violate the legal standard set by Roe. v. Wade - which currently, they do.

If the court rules that it’s not unconstitutional, then they are effectively overturning Roe. v. Wade, and in fact, the court might explicitly overturn Roe. v Wade in their ruling. Right now, 12 states: Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah have so-called “trigger laws”, that automatically ban all, or nearly all abortions if Roe. v Wade is ever overturned - they don’t even need to pass new laws - they’re just waiting for it to happen.

And frankly there is little evidence that the highly politicized anti-abortion conservative supermajority in the Supreme Court will vote against it - not only have they clearly signaled their support in overturning Roe. v Wade if given the chance - and this is their chance, but they have consistently used their supermajority since Amy Coney Barrett was appointed one week before the 2020 election to set deliberate limits on abortion rights while refusing to vote against blatantly unconstitutional actions like the $10,000 Texas abortion bounty.

To highlight how serious and impactful this ruling is, there are literally abortion bans that have already been found unconstitutional, like a 2019 bill in Georiga that bans abortions after 6-weeks, that are being held by appeals courts until after the Dobbs ruling is decided on - meaning that this ruling will directly impact future rulings that have been blocked by Roe v. Wade. This is the single greatest threat to abortion rights that we have seen in our lifetime, and it’s also the most likely to pass.

Since 1973, conservatives have worked very hard to impose limits on abortions and abortion clinics that effectively do make it impossible in certain states. The case in Mississippi is being filed against the only abortion provider in the entire state - that’s only still open because of multiple federal injunctions preventing the state from shutting it down. The reality is that abortion is already effectively banned in Mississippi, and the slippery slope of allowing that has brought us to this potentially disastrous ruling that could ban abortions outright in half the country.

Only 15 states and the District of Columbia have explicit laws that protect abortion rights, while 22 states already have anti-abortion laws on the books. Now, it’s not clear when the court will actually vote, but the case begins today on December 1st, 2021, and we’ll continue providing updates on the proceedings, because if you care about upholding abortion rights in the United States, this is a case to pay very close attention to. We certainly will be.