The court heard oral arguments on December 1 in a challenge to a Mississippi law that bans almost all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy.
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act — which passed in 2018 but has since been blocked by two federal courts — allows abortion after 15 weeks “only in medical emergencies or for severe fetal abnormality” with no exception for rape or incest.
With Dobbs, the state has asked the court to challenge two landmark decisions related to reproductive rights: Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which hold that the US Constitution protects the right to have an abortion before the fetus can survive on its own outside the womb.
These arguments come one month to the day since the court heard challenges to Texas’s Senate Bill 8 (SB 8), a law that severely limited access to abortion throughout the state.
