US Supreme Court to Hear Abortion Case

[Jacob]

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court said Monday it would hear a major challenge to the reach of the landmark Roe vs. Wade abortion ruling and decide whether states may bar nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of a pregnancy.
The justices said they had voted to hear an appeal from Mississippi that urges the court to "reconsider the bright-line viability rule" that says states may not prohibit abortions until the time a fetus is viable or capable of living on its own. This is generally about the 23rd week of a pregnancy.

It is the court's first major move to reconsider abortion rights since Justice Amy Coney Barrett replaced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September shortly after Mississippi had lodged its appeal. Barrett, who has acknowledged being personally opposed to abortion, is widely expected to be the vote that would allow the court's conservative majority to rein in abortion rights.

Several other Republican-led states have passed laws to forbid abortions at early stages of a pregnancy, but all those measures have been blocked because of the court's precedents on abortion. Arguments in the case, Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization, will be heard in the fall when the new court term begins.

Monday's announcement followed an unusually long debate inside the court. The Mississippi appeal was pending when Barrett took her seat in late October, and the justices listed it for discussion in every weekly conference since the first week of January. It takes four votes to grant review of a case, and five to make a majority.

The justices may have been struggling with the question of what it would mean if they ruled for Mississippi. Could the court adopt a new constitutional limit that protected legal abortions through the 15th week of a pregnancy, or would doing so implicitly invite conservative states to set even earlier cutoffs? If so, the court would be setting the stage —not just to further limit the right to abortion for women — but to repeal it.

"Alarm bells are ringing loudly about the threat to reproductive rights. The Supreme Court just agreed to review an abortion ban that unquestionably violates nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedent and is a test case to overturn Roe v. Wade," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. "The consequences of a Roe reversal would be devastating. Over 20 states would prohibit abortion outright. Eleven states —including Mississippi — currently have trigger bans on the books which would instantaneously ban abortion if Roe is overturned."

Such a ruling could mean the reproductive rights of women depended on where they resided. California and most blue states would maintain abortion as a legal right, while more conservative states could limit abortion or outlaw it entirely. Already, abortions are hard to obtain in many states because there are few clinics or doctors who perform the procedure.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-05-17/supreme-court-agrees-to-hear-abortion-case

Not super looped into US legal battles, but my assumption is that the court will restrict access to abortion where possible.

[Grey Fox]

And that will be a phyrric victory.