Advocates for abortion rights warned Monday that “chaos would ensue” if the Supreme Court overturned the old precedents that protected the constitutional right to abortion.
The claim was filed in court filed by abortion providers in Mississippi, who are challenging the state’s ban on virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
“The consequences would be quick and safe,” the group argued. “As abortion bans are enforced, or threatened to be enforced, large southern and midwestern strips would likely be without access to legal abortion.”
Judges in the coming months will review Mississippi’s restrictive law, which is colliding with the 1973 court ruling in Roe v.Wade and decades of subsequent rulings that have affirmed the right to an abortion before the viability of the fetus, usually around 24 weeks.
The Center for Reproductive Rights, an advocacy group representing Mississippi abortion providers in the case, said a decision that reduced Roe would see a sharp reduction in access to abortion in dozens of states.
More than 90 restrictions on abortion have already been enacted this year, according to the abortion rights think tank, the Guttmacher Institute, which has described 2021 as “the worst legislative year in history” for rights. to abortion in the US
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R), who defends the law, explicitly urged judges to use the case as a vehicle to overturn Roe, calling the court’s precedent on abortion “blatant.” .
A dozen Republican governors in a letter from a friend of the court also asked judges to remove federal protections against abortion to allow states to regulate the procedure.
Mississippi’s appeal to the Supreme Court caused losses in the lower courts. In 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the Mississippi restriction was an unconstitutional prohibition on a woman’s right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy before the viability of the fetus.
The 15-week abortion ban makes exceptions only for a medical emergency or a “serious fetal abnormality.”
Opponents of abortion expect a sympathetic audience with a Supreme Court bench made up of six Conservative judges, including three former nominees President Trump
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Earlier this month, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, rejected an emergency request from abortion providers to block the new six-week abortion ban in Texas.
Legal experts said the Supreme Court’s refusal to block Texas’ restrictive measure could foreshadow further erosion of reproductive rights when the Conservative-majority court weighed Mississippi law.