WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will hear arguments Dec. 1 in Mississippi’s bid to have the landmark Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a woman’s right to an abortion overturned.
The court issued its arguments calendar for late November and early December on Monday.
Mississippi is asking the high court to uphold its ban on most abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. The state has told the court it should overrule Roe and the 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey that prevent states from banning abortion before viability, the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, around 24 weeks of pregnancy.
The court recently allowed a Texas law to take effect that bans abortions after cardiac activity can be detected, around 6 weeks of pregnancy, before some women even know they are pregnant. The law is unusual in that it allows private citizens to sue people who may have facilitated a prohibited abortion. The court, split 5-4, did not rule on the constitutionality of the law, but rather declined to block enforcement while a challenge to the law plays out in the courts.
Still, abortion providers took the vote as an ominous sign about where the court, its conservative majority fortified with three appointees of former President Donald Trump, might be heading on abortion.
The providers have said Mississippi wants the court to “scuttle a half-century of precedent and invite states to ban abortion entirely.”
The Mississippi law was enacted in 2018, but was blocked after a federal court challenge. The state’s only abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, remains open and offers abortions up to 16 weeks of pregnancy. About 100 abortions a year are done after the 15th week, the providers said.
More than 90% of abortions in the U.S. take place in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The justices will be at their seats in the marble courtroom for the biggest test of abortion rights in decades.
The high court announced earlier this month that the justices plan to return to their majestic, marble courtroom for arguments beginning in October, more than a year and a half after the in-person sessions were halted because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The court is allowing live audio of the session, but members of the public will not be able to attend in person because of the coronavirus pandemic. Reporters who cover the court regularly will be present.
The justices all have been vaccinated, the court has said, allowing a return to in-person arguments after more than a year of arguments via telephone. The courthouse remains closed to the public.
The justices had been hearing cases by phone during the pandemic.
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I hope to GOD they overturn RvW, but i fear they won’t.. BUT this gives me a little hope.
Yes, these women who are trying to stop this need to realize that they need to think about what they are doing. Biden who is supposed to be a devout Catholic is lying to all of us, he is the biggest hypocrite that ever took communion. They should excommunicate him and his Dr. Jill who is just as much a hypocrite as he is.
If we continue to use abortion as a birth control, your race will be finished! Whether you are Black or White you are on the low scale of your race, and if you were just a little smarter you would use other forms of Birth Control ! It just shows how they want to eliminate the poor and lower middle class. Upper Class and Middle Class, use birth control but they don’t use Abortion as a birth control.
THey were already whining a few months back, about how FEW AMERICANS are being born now days, and that whites are slipping down in population..
THAT ALONE IS A big reason to end abortion!