The Mississippi law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks was upheld by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which was decided by a 6-3 vote.
However, in its decision, the court went much further and overturned Roe v. Wade as well as 49 years of judicial opinions confirming a woman’s right to an abortion.
The decision was the result of decades-long efforts by opponents of abortion to nominate judges to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe.
Many people, particularly Catholics, who believe that life begins at conception, opposed Roe at its inception.
However, the Catholic Church also opposed contraception, a teaching that is frequently ignored. However, over time, a growing Evangelical movement in the United States adopted the Catholic viewpoint.
In the 1960s and 1970s, that movement got involved in politics and, by 2000, had a big impact on the Republican Party. Its adherents, who shared the belief that life begins at conception, considered abortion to be a form of murder.
Conservatives had been disappointed over the years when Republican presidents appointed Supreme Court justices only to find that their decisions were more liberal than expected.
Consequently, the Federalist Society was established in 1982 with the intention of supporting a textualist and originalist interpretation of the Constitution.
This included the idea that the decision in Roe v. Wade was wrong. Republicans started selecting Supreme Court nominees only from judges recommended by the Federalist Society.
Before being elected, President Donald Trump had stated that he would only appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade.
When Trump took office, he was able to name his first Justice. because Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader in the Senate, had refused to hold hearings on President Obama’s nominee for the court on March 16, 2016, when he was nominated.
It was too close to the November election, according to McConnell’s justification. Neil Gorsuch was nominated by Trump. In 2018, Justice Antony Kennedy announced his retirement for unknown reasons.
Kennedy was a moderate conservative who cast the decisive vote in the 2015 case Obergefell v. Hodges, which made same-sex marriage legal in the United States. Justice Brett Kavanaugh took Kennedy’s place.
Finally, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away on September 18, 2020. She was a court icon of liberalism. Amy Coney Barrett was nominated by President Trump to succeed Ginsburg on September 29, 2020.
On October 26, 2020, less than two weeks before Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election, the Senate quickly confirmed her own.
The three candidates were well-known for their extremely conservative viewpoints, including their opposition to abortion.
They were all members of the Federalist Society. At their confirmation hearings, all three asserted that Roe v. Wade was established law and that they upheld the principle of “Stare decisis,” which is Latin for “a foundation stone of the rule of law”: that decisions should be kept, unless there is a very good reason to change them.
Knowing that the law it passed was unconstitutional under the current interpretation, Mississippi banned abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. Still, those who supported the law hoped that the newly formed Supreme Court would uphold it.
The first day of oral arguments was December 1, 2021. A copy of Justice Alito’s initial draft of the opinion was leaked on May 3, 2022.
He not only upheld the Mississippi law, but he also overturned the initial Roe v. Wade decision, which established a constitutionally protected right to an abortion.
Alito’s justification consisted of asserting that the implied constitutional right to privacy on which Roe and a number of other decisions are based does not exist.
Alito went on to say that the right to have an abortion does not come from American history or tradition.
In this manner he guaranteed that Roe was wrongly settled. Lastly, he dispelled the argument that Roe should not be overturned in accordance with the Stare Decisis doctrine by citing overturned decisions like Plessey.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Thomas stated that other decisions like Obergefell v. Hodges should now be revised on the basis of this logic.
In his concurrence, Chief Justice Roberts stated that, despite his support for upholding the Mississippi law, he saw no reason to completely overturn Roe.
The first important point made by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan in their dissent was that nothing had changed other than the composition of the court to justify disregarding Stare decisis. Roe law was established.
They asserted that the court had achieved equilibrium between the rights of the mother and those of the developing fetus.
They claimed that the court had now upset that balance and was removing a constitutional right for the first time in its history. They stated that “the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens” will result from this decision.
Dissenters contend that the majority opinion damaged public confidence in the court by disregarding precedent.
By writing, they concluded their disagreement: We disapprove, not only for the Court but also for the millions of American women who now lack fundamental constitutional protection.
