The Supreme Court has ended constitutional protections for abortion that have been in place for nearly 50 years in a decision by its conservative majority to overturn Roe v Wade.
The ruling is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half of US states, reports Mark Sherman for The Associated Press. The decision was the culmination of decades of efforts by abortion opponents, made possible by an emboldened right side of the court that has been fortified by three appointees of former president Donald Trump.
The ruling came more than a month after the stunning leak of a draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito indicating the court was prepared to take this momentous step. It puts the court at odds with a majority of Americans who favoured preserving Roe, according to opinion polls.
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Justice Alito, in the final opinion issued on Friday, wrote that Roe and Planned Parenthood v Casey, the 1992 decision that reaffirmed the right to abortion, was wrong the day it was decided and must be overturned. Authority to regulate abortion rests with the political branches, not the courts, Justice Alito wrote. Joining him were Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
The latter three justices are Trump appointees. Justice Thomas first voted to overrule Roe 30 years ago. Chief Justice John Roberts would have stopped short of ending the abortion right, noting that he would have upheld the Mississippi law at the heart of the case, a ban on abortion after 15 weeks, and said no more.
Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — the diminished liberal wing of the court — were in dissent. The ruling is expected to disproportionately affect minority women who already face limited access to healthcare, according to statistics analysed by The Associated Press.
Thirteen states, mainly in the South and Midwest, already have laws on the books that ban abortion in the event Roe is overturned. Another half-dozen states have near-total bans or prohibitions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.
The decision came against a backdrop of public opinion surveys that find a majority of Americans oppose overturning Roe and handing the question of whether to permit abortion entirely to the states.
Polls conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research and others also have consistently shown about one in 10 Americans want abortion to be illegal in all cases. A majority are in favour of abortion being legal in all or most circumstances but polls indicate many also support restrictions especially later in pregnancy.
The Biden administration and other defenders of abortion rights have warned that a decision overturning Roe would threaten other high court decisions in favour of gay rights and even potentially, contraception.
But Justice Alito wrote in his draft opinion that his analysis addresses abortion only, not other rights that also stem from a right to privacy that the high court has found implicit, though not directly stated, in the constitution. Abortion is different, Justice Alito wrote, because of the unique moral question it poses.
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