Here’s what you need to know at the end of Friday.
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Good evening. The Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion today. We unpack the landmark decision in a special edition of this newsletter. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade ended the constitutionally protected right to abortion after nearly 50 years. It will lead to bans on the procedure in about half of the states. All three of former President Trump’s appointees were in the majority in the 6-to-3 ruling. The decision vindicated a decades-long Republican campaign to install conservative judges and justices. It also reversed Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a Supreme Court case that reaffirmed Roe in 1992. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, echoed much of what was leaked in a draft opinion in May.
“Abortion presents a profound moral question,” Alito wrote. “The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.” Our reporters annotated the full opinion. Thirteen states have trigger laws that will ban the procedure either immediately or in the coming days. Abortion bans went into effect today in nine states — Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and Wisconsin — in response to the court decision. The procedure is likely to be banned in another 11 states. Abortion clinics in Montgomery, Ala. and Sioux Falls shut down immediately. We’re tracking abortion laws in each state. Follow our updates here. Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the majority but said he would have taken “a more measured course” and stopped short of overruling Roe outright. In an anguished joint dissent, the three liberal justices — Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — wrote that the court had done grave damage to women’s equality and to its own legitimacy.
“With sorrow — for this court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection — we dissent.”
The case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, concerned a 2018 law that banned abortions in Mississippi at 15 weeks. That law was a calculated challenge to Roe, which prohibited states from banning abortions before fetal viability, currently around 23 weeks. Alito used a legal philosophy known as “original intent,” which involves scrutinizing the founding document’s language for direction on contemporary issue, to argue that the right to an abortion could not be found in the Constitution.
“Today the Supreme Court of the United States expressly took away a constitutional right for the American people,” President Biden said from the White House.
