The Unique Dangers of the Supreme Court’s Decision to Hear a Mississippi Abortion Case

Mississippi asks Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade in upcoming case

The most pressing question now may be not whether Roe and Casey can survive but how reproductive rights can be sustained without them.

Jackson Women’s Health has another distinction. There is every possibility that the case bearing its name—along with that of Thomas Dobbs, the state health officer of Mississippi—will be the one that either overturns Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the two Supreme Court rulings that are the bedrocks of reproductive rights, or renders them powerless. This case began as a challenge to a Mississippi law forbidding abortions after fifteen weeks (counting from a woman’s last menstrual period), except in very narrow circumstances. A woman would have to be facing a medical emergency that could cause “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function”—or threaten her life. The only other exception would be if doctors determined that the fetus, even if carried to full term, could not survive. Rape and incest would not be taken into account.

Crucially, fifteen weeks is well before the point at which a fetus would be viable outside the womb, and that is also the point at which the Supreme Court has said that a woman’s interest in controlling her own body outweighs any other interests the state has.

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