Supreme Court could reverse Roe v. Wade with Mississippi abortion case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday said it will review Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy — serving as the first opportunity for the 6-3 conservative-majority court to challenge Roe v. Wade.

The 15-week ban, passed by state lawmakers in 2018 and immediately blocked by lower federal courts, will provide one of the first reproductive rights cases argued before the Supreme Court since Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed in 2020. The 6-3 conservative majority is widely expected to curtail access to abortion.

“As the only abortion clinic left in Mississippi, we see patients who have spent week saving up the money to travel here and pay for childcare, for a place to stay, and everything else involved. If this ban were to take effect, we would be forced to turn many of those patients away, and they would lose the right to abortion in the state,” Diane Derziz, owner of Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the state’s sole abortion clinic, said in a statement. “Mississippi politicians have created countless barriers for people trying to access abortion, intentionally pushing them later in the pregnancy. It’s all part of their strategy to eliminate abortion access entirely.”

The court met 13 different times to consider taking the case, a move many legal analysts have called unprecedented. The taking of this case marks the first time since the landmark 1973 abortion rights case Roe v. Wade that the U.S. Supreme Court has taken up a a pre-viability ban case — a law that prohibits access to abortion based on the amount of time pregnant before the fetus is viable, or around 24 weeks when it is able to live outside the womb.

Read more: https://mississippitoday.org/2021/05/17/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-mississippi-abortion/