In the 1973 case Roe v. Wade, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to have an abortion without government restriction. Although the right to an abortion became the law of the land, the debate over a woman’s right to an abortion has persisted. Over the years, the topic of abortion, specifically a woman’s right to one, has been increasingly debated.
A case in point is one of the Supreme Court’s upcoming cases, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which will be the first time that the Court will decide whether or not all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional. The case questions Mississippi’s “Gestational Age Act,’ an act that bans abortions after 15 weeks with exceptions for a medical emergency or a severe fetal abnormality. This claim directly refutes the decision made in Roe v. Wade. In fact, this is not the first time the merit of Roe v. Wade has been questioned. Throughout history, people, including liberal constitutional scholars, have questioned the grounds that the decision of Roe v. Wade stands on.
Republican lawmakers across the country have been set on overturning Roe v. Wade for decades, and it may finally be happening. This July, twelve republican governors filed a brief with the Supreme Court in hopes that the justices will overturn the Roe v. Wade decision.
Although Roe has been challenged previously, this time is different. There are three additional conservative judges on the Supreme Court: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. “Even with the current state of our Supreme Court,” a sophomore at RHHS hopes that “the decision they make is the right one. The one that benefits everyone.”
If Roe v. Wade is overturned, 25 million individuals will lose access to abortion care. To put that into perspective, approximately ⅓ of all people of reproductive age in America may lose the ability to access abortion in their state. The closest abortion clinics to 41% of people would shut down, forcing countless women to travel about 279 miles in order to find an abortion clinic. “The wrong decision would be a huge setback for society,” claim a group of juniors from RHHS.
In the absence of Roe v Wade, a woman’s access to abortion would be determined by the state she lives in. Ten states, predominantly in the South, have trigger laws set to enforce a ban on abortions, making them illegal if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Fourteen blue states, in addition to the District of Columbia, have also passed trigger laws, except these laws establish a state right to pre-viability abortion, or later depending on the state and circumstances, which would be placed into effect if Roe v. Wade is overturned. It is likely that if state law is able to prevail, some states will follow Oregon, Vermont, and D.C. in granting women the right to an abortion without any legal interference throughout their entire pregnancy.Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health is scheduled to be heard on December 1, 2021. In it lies the fate of millions of lives, particularly the lives of countless women.
