That, to put it mildly, is not good news for the future of abortion rights
Because Mississippi’s ban at 15 weeks was a full two months before viability, the lower courts that assessed the law all said it was clearly unconstitutional. This includes the Fifth Circuit, the rabidly conservative and anti-abortion federal appeals court that covers Mississippi. Even that court, which has repeatedly batted away challenges to Texas’s SB 8 and allowed it to go into effect, said Mississippi’s law was unconstitutional under current Supreme Court law.
Mississippi’s only hope was to get the Supreme Court to change the law of abortion under the Constitution. So today, Mississippi asked the court to overturn its abortion precedent. Originally, the state asked the court just to allow it to have a 15-week ban.
The only big question that seems to remain after today’s argument is how many of those six justices are going to go even further and rule that not only is a 15-week ban constitutional, but that a complete ban would be constitutional as well. And here’s where we have to do what constitutional lawyers and law professors know is the only real principle of Supreme Court law — how to count to five. Because five is the way to a majority ruling that has the force of law on a nine-member court.
So what do we know about the six conservatives after today’s argument? Chief Justice John Roberts repeatedly asked questions showing that he thought’s viability line was not supported by the Constitution and that a 15-week ban would be a perfectly fine line to draw. He did not seem to indicate he wanted to get rid ofBut he seemed alone in that regard.
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Crowds gather outside Supreme Court as future of Roe v. Wade on the lineProtesters on both sides of the abortion rights argument demonstrated outside of the Supreme Court as the justices heard oral arguments in a Mississippi abortion case that would ban most abortions in the state after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Read more:
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