The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned the Roe v. Wade opinion that has secured constitutional protections for abortion in the U.S. for nearly 50 years.
The milestone ruling, a draft of which was leaked last month, has the potential to claw back abortion access across the country by allowing states to restrict or outright ban the procedure.
Friday's 6-3 decision delivered by Justice Samuel Alito, with all three liberal justices dissenting, reverses the historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. That original ruling found that a woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy was protected by the right to privacy that flows from the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects a citizen's right to "life, liberty and property."
"The constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision," Alito wrote.
The state could only interfere with that right, the court found, after a fetus reached the "viability" stage, around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy, when the fetus could be considered viable outside the womb.
The case before the court, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, centred on a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks.
The Supreme Court's decision to overturn a lower court ruling that found, in line with the Roe v. Wade precedent, that the ban was unconstitutional does not mean abortion will be automatically outlawed across the country.
Rather, individual state legislatures will now decide how to regulate the medical procedure and to what extent they want to allow, restrict or ban it outright.
Roughly half the states in the U.S., largely in the South and Midwest, have already signalled that they will likely move quickly to ban abortion or restrict access to it to some degree.
'Roe was egregiously wrong'
At least 13 states have so-called trigger laws that ban or severely limit abortion and are set to come into effect virtually as soon as Roe v. Wade is overturned.
The Supreme Court decision also overturns the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruling, which upheld the protection of a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy without undue burdens such as waiting periods and consent and notification requirements but allowed states to add some limitations, including in the first trimester.
"Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division," said Alito.
Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan issued a joint dissent.
"Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws, one result of today's decision is certain: the curtailment of women's rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens," they wrote.
The invalidation of Roe v. Wade marks a significant victory for the anti-abortion movement, whose supporters have been lobbying legislators to confirm conservative judges on the Supreme Court in hopes of gaining a majority that would eventually undo the precedent.
The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has been considering what executive action could be taken to thwart the top court's ruling, but any such attempt would likely also face legal challenges.
Vice-President Kamala Harris convened a roundtable earlier this month of constitutional law professors and privacy experts on the potential consequences to strategize over the expectation that the landscape would shift.
Reaction from Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
Today, the Republican-controlled Supreme Court has achieved the GOP’s dark and extreme goal of ripping away women’s right to make their own reproductive health decisions.
—Tensions high ahead of ruling
The opinion leak, first reported by Politico, and news that a majority of five of the conservative judges seemed set to overturn Roe v. Wade, sparked outrage and protests across the country. A 2.4-metre-tall fence was erected around the Supreme Court in the days after the leak as part of ramped-up security measures.
In its latest terrorism advisory bulletin, the Department of Homeland Security warned of "individuals who advocate both for and against abortion have, on public forums, encouraged violence, including against government, religious, and reproductive health-care personnel and facilities."
Read the full text of the ruling:
Some buildings housing organizations known to be opposed to abortion have been vandalized in recent weeks, while on the opposite end of the issue, arson damaged a Wyoming clinic that soon planned to offer abortions to pregnant people.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers from both parties have expressed concern about protesters showing up on the streets outside of the homes of some of the conservative justices, though they have gathered peacefully.
In an incident separate from those demonstrations, an armed man who travelled from California to Justice Brett Kavanaugh's residence in Maryland has been charged with attempted murder.
Reaction from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham:
Today’s decision by the Supreme Court is a long overdue constitutional correction allowing for elected officials in the states to decide issues of life.
—Concerns about access to medication
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, 93 per cent of all abortions tracked occurred within 13 weeks of gestation, much earlier than the viability standard set forth by the consequential Casey ruling and in line with other Western democracies.
Access to the procedure in the U.S. was already uneven, however. For example, the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research group, recently reported that abortions in Missouri dropped by 96 per cent from 2017 to 2020, as mounting regulations left just one clinic in the state that performed the procedure.
In a timed statement Friday after the Dobbs ruling, Missouri's attorney general said it would ban abortion, except in cases of medical emergency.
Guttmacher — which recently reported that U.S. abortions had risen by eight per cent in the period from 2017 to 2020 — also said a census of all known abortion providers indicated that medication abortion accounted for 54 per cent of all terminated pregnancies in 2020.
Pro-choice activists worry that these medical abortions, or abortifacients, are the next frontier for some states. On Wednesday, Louisiana enacted a law blocking the sale of abortion-inducing medication through the mail.
Physicians and health staff at abortion clinics have also expressed concern about the potential consequences of their actions going forward.
