And finally, it undermines the Court’s legitimacy.”Īnd Thomas, the member of the court most open to jettisoning prior decisions, wrote a separate opinion in which he explicitly called on his colleagues to put the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage, gay sex and even contraception cases on the table.īut Alito contended that his analysis addresses abortion only. In doing all of that, it places in jeopardy other rights, from contraception to same-sex intimacy and marriage. It breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law. The liberal justices made the same point in their joint dissent: The majority “eliminates a 50-year-old constitutional right that safeguards women’s freedom and equal station. The Biden administration and other defenders of abortion rights have warned that a decision overturning Roe also would threaten other high court decisions in favor of gay rights and even potentially, contraception. A majority are in favor of abortion being legal in all or most circumstances, but polls indicate many also support restrictions especially later in pregnancy. Polls conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and others also have consistently shown about 1 in 10 Americans want abortion to be illegal in all cases. The decision came against a backdrop of public opinion surveys that find a majority of Americans oppose overturning Roe and handing the question of whether to permit abortion entirely to the states.
In Wisconsin, which has an 1849 abortion ban on the books, Planned Parenthood immediately halted all scheduled abortions at its clinics in Madison and Milwaukee following the high court’s ruling. Protestors gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington on Friday. In roughly a half-dozen other states, the fight will be over dormant abortion bans that were enacted before Roe was decided in 1973 or new proposals to sharply limit when abortions can be performed, according to Guttmacher. Another half-dozen states have near-total bans or prohibitions after 6 weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant. Mississippi is one of 13 states, mainly in the South and Midwest, that already have laws on the books that ban abortion in the event Roe is overturned.
Clinic escorts wearing colorful vests used large stereo speakers to blast Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” at the protesters. Outside, men used a bullhorn to tell people inside the clinic that they would burn in hell. Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, which is at the center of the case, continued to see patients Friday. More than 90% of abortions take place in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, and more than half are now done with pills, not surgery, according to data compiled by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
“States may not ban Mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy,” Garland said. In particular, Garland said that the federal Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of Mifepristone for medication abortions.