Losing Abortion Rights in Supreme Court Case

"The 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade protected a women's right to an abortion without excessive restrictions. But the high court is now considering arguments in another case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, that gives the conservative majority their most significant chance in decades to gut the Roe precedent. In oral arguments, the six conservatives seemed open to allowing a Mississippi law that bars abortions after 15 weeks to stand, undermining the core principles of the Roe verdict.

The court is not expected to rule on the case for months; typically, justice wait to release opinions in their most explosive cases until the end of their yearly term in June.

But the scenario in which justices overturn Roe is one for which conservatives have been preparing for decades, by laying a foundation of laws that either sought to bring a challenge to the high court or snap into effect once abortion laws changed

Twelve states -- Arkansas, Idaho, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Utah -- have passed laws that would bar all or nearly all abortions, written in a way that would bar all or nearly all abortions, written in a way that would allow them to take effect after the Supreme Court overturns Roe, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion rights research institution. 

'Those laws vary by state, but they all have language that describes how they would take effect,' said Elizabeth Nash, director of state issues at the Guttmacher Institute. Some require the state attorney general to certify that the Supreme Court's decision allows that state to ban abortions.

Eight states -- Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wisconsin -- still have abortion bans on their books that were passed years, and sometimes decades, before Roe was decided. Texas has a similar law that is under injunction by a federal court.

But if the precedent is struck down, those laws would be enforceable once again, and the Supreme  Court ruling would likely allow Texas's law to take effect.

'If Roe is overturned, then states with pre-Roe bans could take the steps necessary to implement them,' Nash said.

Those states, some of which have laws that both predate and post-date the Roe decision, are home to a collective 51 million women. Georgia, Ohio and South Carolina, which have each passed restrictions on abortion that were ruled unconstitutional under Roe, but could be reinstated depending on the court's ruling, are home to another 14 million women.

Collectively, the 65 million women who live in states where abortion restrictions would take effect in a post-Roe world represent almost 40 percent of the 165 million women who live in the United States."

Source: Reid Wilson, "65 M women could lose abortion rights in Supreme Court case," The Hill, 12/3/21.