WASHINGTON: The Supreme Court on Friday stripped away women’s constitutional protections for abortion, a fundamental and
deeply personal change for Americans’ lives after nearly a half-century under Roe v. Wade. The court’s overturning of
the landmark court ruling is likely to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states.
The ruling, unthinkable just a few years ago, was the culmination of decades of efforts by abortion opponents, made
possible by an emboldened right side of the court fortified by three appointees of former President Donald Trump.
Both sides predicted the fight over abortion would continue, in state capitals, in Washington and at the ballot box.
Justice Clarence Thomas, part of Friday’s majority, urged colleagues to overturn other high court rulings protecting
same-sex marriage, gay sex and the use of contraceptives.
Pregnant women considering abortions already had been dealing with a near-complete ban in Oklahoma and a
prohibition after roughly six weeks in Texas. Clinics in at least eight other states — Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas,
Kentucky, Missouri, South Dakota, Wisconsin and West Virginia — stopped performing abortions after Friday’s
decision.
In Ohio, a ban on most abortions at the first detectable fetal heartbeat became the law when a federal judge dissolved
an injunction that had kept the measure on hold for nearly three years. And Utah’s law was triggered by the ruling,
going into effect with narrow exceptions.
Abortion foes cheered the ruling, but abortion-rights supporters, including President Joe Biden, expressed dismay and
pledged to fight to restore the rights.
Protests built into the evening in a number of cities, including thousands demonstrating against the decision outside
the barricaded Supreme Court. Thousands more chanted “We will rise up!” in New York’s Washington Square.
At the White House, Biden said, “It’s a sad day for the court and for the country.” He urged voters to make it a
defining issue in the November elections, declaring, “This decision must not be the final word.”
‘You have failed us’
Outside the White House, Ansley Cole, a college student from Atlanta, said she was “scared because what are they
going to come after next? … The next election cycle is going to be brutal, like it’s terrifying. And if they’re going to do
this, again, what’s next?”
“You have failed us,” read a sign held up by one protestor. “Shame,” said another.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, agreed about the political stakes.
“We are ready to go on offense for life in every single one of those legislative bodies, in each statehouse and the White
House,” Dannenfelser said in a statement.
Trump praised the ruling, telling Fox News that it “will work out for everybody.”
The decision is expected to disproportionately affect minority women who already face limited access to health care,
according to statistics analyzed by The Associated Press.
It also puts the court at odds with a majority of Americans who favored preserving Roe, according to opinion polls.
Surveys conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and others have shown a
majority in favor of abortion being legal in all or most circumstances. But many also support restrictions especially
later in pregnancy. Surveys consistently show that about 1 in 10 Americans want abortion to be illegal in all cases.
The ruling came more than a month after the stunning leak of a draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito indicating the
court was prepared to take this momentous step.
Alito, in the final opinion issued Friday, wrote that Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision that
reaffirmed the right to abortion, were wrong had and to be be overturned.
“We therefore hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the
authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives,” Alito wrote, in an
opinion that was very similar to the leaked draft.
Joining Alito were Thomas and Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett. The last three justices
are Trump appointees. Thomas first voted to overrule Roe 30 years ago.
6-3 vote
Four justices would have left Roe and Casey in place.
The vote was 6-3 to uphold Mississippi’s law banning most abortions after 15 weeks, but Chief Justice John Roberts
didn’t join his conservative colleagues in overturning Roe. He wrote that there was no need to overturn the broad
precedents to rule in Mississippi’s favor.
Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — the diminished liberal wing of the court — were in
dissent.
“With sorrow — for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a
fundamental constitutional protection — we dissent,” they wrote, warning that abortion opponents now could pursue
a nationwide ban “from the moment of conception and without exceptions for rape or incest.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that the Justice Department will protect providers and those
seeking abortions in states where it is legal and “work with other arms of the federal government that seek to use
their lawful authorities to protect and preserve access to reproductive care.”
In particular, Garland said the federal Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of Mifepristone for
medication abortions.
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 the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, which was at the center of Friday’s case, continued to see patients Friday. Outside,
men used a bullhorn to tell people inside that they would burn in hell. Clinic escorts wearing colorful vests used large
speakers to blast Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” at the protesters.
Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky and Missouri are among 13 states, mainly in the South and Midwest, that already
have laws on the books to ban abortion in the event Roe was overturned. Another half-dozen states have near-total
bans or prohibitions after 6 weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.
In roughly a half-dozen other states, including West Virginia and Wisconsin, 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.
Outside the barricaded Supreme Court, a crowd of mostly young women grew into the hundreds within hours of the
decision. Some shouted, “The Supreme Court is illegitimate,” while waves of others, wearing red shirts with “The
Pro-Life Generation Votes,” celebrated, danced and thrust their arms into the air.
Other rights ‘in jeopardy’
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.
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. It breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote
constancy in the law. In doing all of that, it places in jeopardy other rights, from contraception to same-sex intimacy
and marriage. And finally, it undermines the Court’s legitimacy.”
And 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 contraception cases on
the table.
But Alito contended that his analysis addresses abortion only. “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast
doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion,” he wrote.
Whatever the intentions of the person who leaked Alito’s draft opinion, the conservatives held firm in overturning Roe
and Casey.
In his opinion, Alito dismissed the arguments in favor of retaining the two decisions, including that multiple
generations of American women have partly relied on the right to abortion to gain economic and political power.
