In a 6 to 3 vote, the US Supreme Court has overturned the 1973 Roe vs Wade court case that legalized abortion across the US.
In its landmark ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that the constitution does not provide the right to abortion and returned the final decision on the legality of abortions to state legislatures and ultimately the voters who elected them.
The legality of Roe vs Wade was challenged by the State of Mississippi, which wanted to ban abortions after 13 weeks.
The Daily Mail provides more details:
Roe v. Wade was centered around ‘Jane Roe’, a pseudonym for Norma McCorvey, a single mother pregnant for the third time, who wanted an abortion. She sued the Dallas attorney general Henry Wade over a Texas law that made it a crime to terminate a pregnancy except in cases of rape or incest, or when the mother’s life was in danger – arguing that the law infringed on her constitutional rights.
‘The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,’ Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who was nominated to the court in 2006 by George W Bush, wrote in the ruling on Friday.
The ruling means that individual states now have the power to decide on whether to ban abortion. The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice research group, has said that 26 states are ‘certain or likely’ to ban abortion now.
According to reports, several states had passed trigger laws that would immediately come into effect if Roe vs Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court.
These were implemented after a leaked draft decision suggested the Supreme Court was considering overturning the controversial law:
The New York Post provides more details:
The Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based pro-choice research organization, reported last year that 22 states already have anti-abortion laws that would kick in as soon as Roe v. Wade falls.
Those states are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Nine states in this group have pre-Roe abortion restrictions still on the books; 13 states have a so-called “trigger ban” that is tied to Roe being overturned; and five states have laws passed after Roe restricting nearly all abortions.
READ: 26 states where abortion will be banned or restricted if Roe v. Wade is overturned
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