Supreme Court Abortion Case Is Part of a Historic Shift

Over the next year, you’re going to hear a lot about the Mississippi abortion case that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear. It’s called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — and the key word at the center of the discussion is going to be “viability.” If the Supreme Court sides with the pro-life side, you can expect to see more state bans on early abortion like the one Texas Governor Greg Abbott just signed into law, which bars abortions after week six of pregnancy.

That’s because since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court has held that there exists a fundamental constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy before the fetus would be viable — that is, able to survive outside the womb. Currently, medical consensus puts viability at 23 to 24 weeks gestation. The Mississippi law prohibits abortion after 15 weeks, long before viability. In taking the case, the Supreme Court said it would consider “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”