WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court on Friday withdrew women’s constitutional protections for abortion, a fundamental and deeply personal change for the lives of Americans after nearly half a century under Roe v. Wade. The court’s reversal of the historic court ruling is likely to lead to a ban on abortion in about half of the states.
The ruling, unthinkable just a few years ago, was the culmination of decades of efforts by opponents of abortion, made possible by a emboldened right-wing side of the court fortified by three nominees of former President Donald Trump.
Both sides predicted that the fight for abortion would continue, in state capitals, in Washington and at the polls. Judge Clarence Thomas, who is part of the majority on Friday, urged his colleagues to overturn other high court decisions protecting same-sex marriage, gay sex and the use of sex. ‘contraceptives.
Pregnant women who were considering having an abortion had already been faced with an almost total ban in Oklahoma and a ban after about six weeks in Texas. Clinics in at least eight other states (Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and West Virginia) stopped having abortions after Friday’s decision.
Enemies of abortion applauded the ruling, but supporters of abortion rights, including President Joe Biden, expressed dismay and pledged to fight to restore rights.
“It’s a sad day for the court and for the country,” Biden told the White House. He urged voters to make it a final issue in the November election, and declared: “This decision should not be the last word.”
Outside the White House, Ansley Cole, an Atlanta college student, said she was “scared because after what will they come? … The next election cycle will be brutal, like it’s scary. And if they do that again, what’s going on?
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, agreed on the political bets.
“We are prepared to commit a lifelong offensive in all legislative bodies, in every state palace and in the White House,” Dannenfelser said in a statement.
Trump praised the ruling and told Fox News that “it will work for everyone.”
According to statistics analyzed by The Associated Press, the decision is expected to disproportionately affect minority women who already face limited access to health care.
It also puts the court at odds with most Americans who were in favor of preserving Roe, according to opinion polls.
Surveys conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and others have shown a majority in favor of abortion being legal in all or most circumstances. But many also support the restrictions, especially after pregnancy. Surveys consistently show that approximately 1 in 10 Americans wants abortion to be illegal in all cases.
The verdict came more than a month after the impressive leak of a draft opinion by Judge Samuel Alito indicating that the court was willing to take this momentous step.
Alito, in the final opinion issued Friday, wrote that Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision reaffirming the right to abortion, had to be overturned.
“Therefore, we consider that the Constitution does not confer the right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overturned, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives, “Alito wrote, in an opinion very similar to the leaked draft.
They were joined by Alito Thomas and Judges Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The last three judges are appointed by Trump. Thomas first voted to annul Roe 30 years ago.
Four judges reportedly left Roe and Casey in their place.
The vote was 6-3 to defend Mississippi law, but Chief Justice John Roberts did not join his Conservative colleagues in overturning Roe. He wrote that it was not necessary to override the broad precedents for governing in favor of Mississippi.
Judges Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, the court’s diminished liberal wing, were in dissent.
“With pity, for this Court, but even more so, for the many millions of American women who today have lost fundamental constitutional protection, we disagree,” they wrote, warning that opponents of abortion could now pursue a ban on everything. the country “from the moment of conception.” and without exceptions for rape or incest ”.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that the Justice Department will protect providers and those seeking abortions in states where it is legal and will also “work with other arms of the federal government trying to use their legal authorities to protect and preserve ‘access to reproduction’. care. ”
In particular, Garland said the Federal Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of mifepristone for drug abortions.
More than 90% of abortions occur in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, and more than half are now done with pills, not surgery, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports the right to abortion. abortion.
Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, which was at the center of Friday’s case, continued to see patients Friday. Outside, men used a megabyte to tell people inside that they would burn in hell. Clinic escorts wearing colorful vests used large speakers to blow up Tom Petty’s “I won’t back down” against protesters.
Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky and Missouri are among the 13 states, mostly in the south and midwest, that already have book laws to ban abortion in the event Roe is revoked. Another half a dozen states have bans or near-total bans after 6 weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.
In about half a dozen more states, including West Virginia and Wisconsin, the fight will be for latent abortion bans that were enacted before Roe was decided in 1973 or new proposals to drastically limit when abortions can be performed, according to Guttmacher .
Outside the barricaded Supreme Court, a crowd of mostly young women became hundreds a few hours after the decision. Some shouted, “The Supreme Court is illegitimate,” while waves of others, wearing red T-shirts with “The Generation’s Votes for Life,” celebrated, danced and threw their arms at the ‘air.
The Biden administration and other advocates for abortion rights have warned that a decision to overturn Roe would also threaten other high court decisions in favor of gay rights and even possible contraception.
Liberal judges made the same point in their joint dissent: the majority “eliminates a 50-year constitutional right that safeguards women’s freedom and equality. It violates a basic principle of the rule of law, designed to promote the constancy of the law. By doing all this, it endangers other rights, from contraception to intimacy and same-sex marriage. And, finally, it undermines the legitimacy of the Court ”.
And Thomas, the member of the court most open to abandoning previous decisions, wrote a separate opinion in which he explicitly asked his colleagues to put on the table cases of same-sex marriage, gay sex and contraception. Supreme Court.
But Alito said his analysis only addresses abortion. “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to call into question precedents that do not relate to abortion,” he wrote.
Whatever the intentions of the person who leaked Alito’s draft opinion, the Conservatives stood firm in toppling Roe and Casey.
In her view, Alito dismissed arguments in favor of retaining both decisions, including that several generations of American women have relied in part on the right to abortion to gain economic and political power.
Changing the composition of the court has been central to the strategy of the anti-abortion side, as dissenters strongly pointed out. “The Court is reversing its course today for one reason and only one: because the composition of this Court has changed,” the Liberal judges wrote.
Mississippi and its allies presented increasingly aggressive arguments as the case unfolded, and two high-profile abortion rights advocates withdrew or died. The state initially argued that its law could be maintained without overturning the court’s abortion precedents.
Judge Anthony Kennedy retired shortly after the Mississippi Act came into force in 2018 and Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 2020. Both had been members of a majority of five judges who primarily protect the rights to abortion.
In their Senate hearings, Trump’s three high-court elections carefully avoided questions about how they would vote in any case, including on abortion.
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Associated Press writers Jessica Gresko, Fatima Hussein and AP video journalist Nathan Ellgren in Washington, Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston, Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi, Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin and Leah Willingham in Charleston, West Virginia, they contributed to that. report.
For full AP coverage of the Supreme Court ruling on abortion, go to