TSR Politics: Mississippi’s attorney general asked the Supreme Court today to overturn the landmark case Roe v. Wade, which would bar most abortions after 15 weeks.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch told the justices that Roe v. Wade was “egregiously wrong” and should be overturned, according to CNN. Roe v. Wade is the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide.
“The conclusion that abortion is a constitutional right has no basis in text, structure, history, or tradition” Fitch told the justices in a new brief. She added that the case for overruling Roe is “overwhelming.”
This is probably the most shocking proposal to radically change abortion laws in the country amid a series of efforts across a number of conservative states that have passed restrtictive abortion-related legislation in an effort to curb the constitutional right.
The justices reportedly deliberated for months on whether to take up Mississippi’s case. Oral arguments will likely be heard in the late fall or early winter with a decision expected by next June ahead of the midterm elections.
Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, passed in 2018 but blocked by two federal courts, allows abortion after 15 weeks “only in medical emergencies or for severe fetal abnormality” with no exception for rape or incest. If doctors perform abortions outside the parameters of the law, they will have their medical license suspended or revoked and may be subject to additional penalties and fines.
A district court blocked the law in a decision affirmed by a federal appeals court.
“In an unbroken line dating to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s abortion cases have established (and affirmed and re-affirmed) a woman’s right to choose an abortion before viability,” a panel of judges on the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals said in December of 2019. “States may regulate abortion procedures prior to viability so long as they do not ban abortions.”
We’ll keep you posted on any updates in this case.