The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. On Friday morning, the justices released their opinions in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which holds “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the Court’s opinion, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh wrote concurring opinions, and Chief Justice John Roberts wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan issued a rare jointly authored dissent. All told, there are 213 pages of opinions and dissents in this historic case.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote separately to say that while he agreed with the outcome of the case – that a Mississippi law restricting abortions in the first trimester was legal, he did not agree with the breadth of the majority's opinion. Roberts wrote, "If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, then it is necessary not to decide more."
The dissenters in Dobbs were co-authors, a rare occurrence in Supreme Court cases. Notably, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which Dobbs overturns, featured an opinion co-authored by three justices, as well. The three liberals on the current Court wrote:
The majority would allow States to ban abortion from conception onward because it does not think forced childbirth at all implicates a woman’s rights to equality and freedom. Today’s Court, that is, does not think there is anything of constitutional significance attached to a woman’s control of her body and the path of her life.
Abortions are now governed by state law, and many states have some kind of abortion ban law that will now take effect following Roe's reversal.
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