Roe V Wade Overturned The Ultimate Explainer On What It Means

By On Jun 27, 2022

The Supreme Court on Friday overturned the nationwide right to abortion in its landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, causing major uncertainty about the future of abortion access in the United States. Here are answers to some of the biggest questions:What did the Supreme Court’s ruling say? In a decision by Justice Samuel Alito, the court upheld a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Five of the court’s nine justices also voted to strike down Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), effectively ruling abortion is no longer a nationwide right up to the point of fetal viability. Alito wrote that Roe v. Wade was “an abuse of judicial authority” that relied on “egregiously wrong” reasoning, and argued the right to abortion is not expressly mentioned in the Constitution and isn’t “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.”Four conservative justices joined Alito’s ruling, while Chief Justice John Roberts agreed to strike down Mississippi’s law but opposed fully overturning Roe v. Wade. The court’s three liberal justices penned a dissent that expressed sorrow “for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection.”Read more: Roe V. Wade Overturned: Supreme Court Overturns Landmark Abortion Decision, Lets States Ban AbortionWhich states have already banned abortion? Over a dozen states have passed “trigger laws” that automatically ban abortion after Roe is struck down. Three of those states—Louisiana, Kentucky and South Dakota—immediately outlawed abortion after Friday’s ruling, and officials in Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Utah also allowed their states’ trigger bans to take effect. Texas’ trigger ban was set to be enacted 30 days after the court overturned Roe, but abortions stopped Friday after the state attorney general said abortion is now “illegal in Texas” and threatened to prosecute abortion providers using a nearly century-old law. Alabama also outlawed abortion Friday after a court allowed the state’s pre-Roe abortion ban to take effect. Five more states with trigger bans are guaranteed to prohibit abortion, but require waiting periods or additional action like the state attorney general certifying the ban. They are: Tennessee, Mississippi, Idaho, North Dakota and Wyoming. Read more: Roe V. Wade Overturned: Here’s When States Will Start Banning Abortion—And Which Already HaveWill more states ban abortion next? Almost certainly yes. The pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute projects up to 26 states will ban or strictly limit abortion. Among those states are Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Arizona, Michigan, Indiana, South Carolina, Nebraska, Iowa and West Virginia. Soon after Friday’s ruling, several GOP governors pushed state lawmakers to consider new abortion restrictions. Michigan Gov.