WASHINGTON (CN) — Working to overturn Roe v. Wade since it was read from the bench in 1973, anti-abortion groups will mount their best chance to do just that on Dec. 1 before the supermajority-conservative Supreme Court.
Shannon Brewer, who is director of the last remaining abortion provider in Mississippi, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, said this one worries her the most, of all the challenges abortion has faced over the years.
“I've been asked a lot of times if this is a scary thing that's going on just like all the other cases we've done over the years, and the other cases have worried me but not to the point of this one,” Brewer told reporters in a call leading up to next Wednesday's arguments. “This case has worried me more than any other one because I know this is going to be detrimental to women, not only here in Mississippi, but in so many states — especially the southern states — because believe me if they decide to do it, most of the southern states are going to ban abortion immediately.”
Jackson Women's Health mounted its challenge of the Gestational Age Act on the day Republican Missouri Governor Phil Bryant signed it into law in 2018. They have prevailed at every turn: first with a permanent injunction from a federal judge who called the law unconstitutional and said its defense in court was a waste of taxpayer dollars. The Fifth Circuit affirmed in December 2019, two months after oral arguments, setting the stage for a Supreme Court showdown.
Thomas E. Dobbs, the state health officer of the Mississippi Department of Health, asked the court to consider a series of questions related to the case, but the court narrowed the case to one issue: the constitutionality of prohibiting elective abortions before a fetus is viable.
The court first announced a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion with Roe v. Wade in 1973, focused on the right to privacy in the 14th Amendment. Nearly 20 years later then, in the 1992 case Casey v. Planned Parenthood, it implemented what's known as a "viability analysis," giving states the power to regulate abortions of a fetus that could survive outside of the womb.
Dobbs did not ask the court to overturn Roe and Casey precedents in his original petition, however, once the court narrowed the scope, he explicitly asked just that. In his brief, he calls the cases “egregiously wrong” and even broke with precedent.
“Roe and Casey are thus at odds with the straightforward, constitutionally grounded answer to the question presented,” Dobbs said in his brief. “So the question becomes whether this Court should overrule those decisions. It should. The stare decisis case for overruling Roe and Casey is overwhelming.”
Nancy Northup, president and CEO at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said if Roe was overturned, half of the states across the country would likely ban abortions — a procedure utilized by one in four women in the United States.
“If Mississippi's bid to have Roe v. Wade overturned is granted in the Supreme Court, we expect about half the states in the United States to recriminalize abortion and that would be devastating to people across the country who need access to those services,” Northrup told reporters.
Banning abortions could not only force women to carry unwanted pregnancies, but it would also create issues for women who have miscarriages.
“It's important to remember that if abortion is a crime, that every miscarriage is possibly a crime scene,” Northrup said.
Dobbs bases his case on the claim that abortion is not constitutionally protected, and said states should have the right to regulate the practice as they like.
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