By Aaron Miller-
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday in a Mississippi abortion case that has the potential to overturn Roe v. Wade. While the case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, stems from a challenge to a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, the high court’s ruling could have seismic impacts for Texas.
Last June, Texas joined 11 other states by enacting a measure that automatically bans abortion after Roe is overturned without having to call a special legislative session.
This is the first major abortion case to come before the court since Amy Coney Barrett helped conservatives secure a 6-3 majority.he stakes are especially high because the Supreme Court has grown more conservative in recent years. When Mississippi officials asked the high court to take the case in 2020, conservative justices outnumbered liberals 5-4. But after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and Trump-nominee Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed, the Court lurched further right. It now has a 6-3 conservative majority.
The Supreme Court ruling comes at a crucial time for abortion access in Texas, as the state and abortion providers await a ruling from the same court on Texas’ most recent efforts to limit abortion. Women have been unable to obtain abortions in Texas after about six weeks of pregnancy since Sept. 1, when the controversial abortion ban went into effect.
Texas law empowers private citizens to enforce the law by suing anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion. This civil method of enforcing the law is intended to evade judicial review and is at the crux of the case that the Supreme Court was asked to consider.
The Mississippi case is a challenge to a 2018 law there that banned abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy except in medical emergencies or cases of severe fetal abnormalities. That state’s last remaining abortion clinic sued and a district court struck down the law, sending it to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham wrote: “In an unbroken line dating to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s abortion cases have established (and affirmed, and re-affirmed) a woman’s right to choose an abortion before viability,” wrote Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham.
Mississippi appealed to the Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments on Dec. 1.
Texas Alliance for Life executive director Joe Pojman said:
“For the first time that I’ve been involved in this issue, which is more than three decades, I have real hope that there are enough votes on the Supreme Court to take a fresh look at the tragic Roe v. Wade precedent and possibly modify it or overturn it,”