The Supreme Court erases the constitutional right to abortion

Nearly a half-century after five Republican-appointed justices joined two Democratic appointees to recognise a woman’s right to abortion, a different quintet of gop-tapped justices has voted to eliminate it. On June 24th the Supreme Court renounced Roe v Wade, the 1973 case that legalised abortion nationwide, and Planned Parenthood v Casey, the decision that extended it (with modifications) in 1992. The vote was 6-3, with all but Chief Justice John Roberts voting to scrap Roe. The Supreme Court has never before withdrawn a constitutional right that so many Americans have relied upon for so long.

Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organisation, the watershed case marking the end of Roe and Casey, began as a run-of-the-mill challenge to a run-of-the-mill abortion law in Mississippi. Next to draconian bans passed in 2019 in neighbouring Georgia and Alabama, Mississippi’s hb1510, enacted a year earlier, was comparatively moderate. It prohibited abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions only for medical emergencies or severe fetal abnormalities. A federal district court promptly blocked hb1510 as unconstitutional and the highly conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.