Supreme Court has set a date to hear Mississippi’s abortion case

“The fate of Roe v. Wade and legal abortion is on the line.”

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The Supreme Court will begin hearing oral arguments for Mississippi’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case starting December 1, 2021. What is to be determined is if state laws that ban pre-viability abortions are unconstitutional.

“The fate of Roe v. Wade and legal abortion is on the line,” tweets Rewire News Group.

This case has the potential to pose a serious challenge to Roe v. Wade. That’s the 1973 ruling that declared that a woman has a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy in the first six months of her pregnancy, when the fetus is incapable of surviving outside the womb, reports NPR

In the state of Mississippi, most abortions are banned after 15 weeks. According to AP, the state has told the court it should overrule Roe and the 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey that prevents states from banning abortion before viability, the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The court’s recent approval to allow a Texas law to go into effect that bans abortions after 6 weeks when cardiac activity can be detected, has many activists and lawmakers nervous as to how Mississippi’s hearings will go. The court did not rule Texas’ abortion law as constitutional or unconstitutional but rather declined to intervene. 

Mississippi’s restriction makes no exception for pregnancies that result from rape or incest and providers who administer abortions in violation of the law could have their medical licenses revoked and face fines, writes Common Dreams

As pointed out by NARAL Pro-Choice America, this will be the first abortion case in the Supreme Court since Justice Amy Coney Barrett had been appointed by former President Donald Trump. 

As reported by The Guardian, nearly 900 state legislators from 45 states had filed a brief with the supreme court, asking it to reject the Mississippi law. The only states that did not provide at least one signatory were Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Wyoming.

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