The bombshell decision is set to upend races across the country as governors, attorneys general, and other state and local leaders gain new powers to decide when abortion will be permitted.
The Supreme Court on Friday revoked the constitutional right to an abortion that has been in place for half a century — overturning Roe v. Wade on a 5-4 vote, clearing the way for dozens of states to swiftly ban the procedure and throwing the country into uncharted political, legal, social and medical territory.
The bombshell decision is set to upend elections across the country as governors, attorneys general and other state and local leaders gain new powers to decide when abortion will be permitted, if at all, and who should be prosecuted and potentially incarcerated when bans take effect.
The high court’s vote to overturn nearly five decades of court rulings upholding a right to end a pregnancy won the support of five of the court’s six conservative justices while Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices opposed overruling Roe.
The majority opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, hewed closely to the draft version obtained exclusively by POLITICO and published in early May.
In its official opinion, the court’s conservative majority went beyond simply resolving the case before them — Mississippi’s near-ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy — and instead overturned both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, long-standing precedents that barred states from banning abortion before the point of fetal viability.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,” Alito wrote. “This Court cannot bring about the permanent resolution of a rancorous national controversy simply by dictating a settlement and telling the people to move on.”
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