Abortion Is Illegal Again | Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Can't get enough of this video? Here are some related videos:

Wait, When Are Abortions Legal? | Planned Parenthood v. Casey (video released 7/9/21) 
How Birth Control Became Legal | Griswold v. Connecticut (video released 12/18/2020)
When Abortion Became Legal | Roe v. Wade (video released 2/19/2017)

And as promised, here is the script from my video:

Jackson, Mississippi
March 19, 2018

The Mississippi state legislature passes a controversial law called the Gestational Age Act, which banned all abortions after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the pregnant woman. After Mississippi’s governor at the time, Phil Bryant, signed the bill into law, he said, “We’ll probably be sued here in about a half hour, and that’ll be fine with me. It is worth fighting over.”^1 Bryant and others who supported the Gestational Age Act, of course, had the true goal of banning abortion and supported this law because they knew it would be challenged and hopefully be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.

Sure enough, within 24 hours after the Gestational Age Act passed, Jackson Women’s Health Organization sued Mississippi. Specifically, Sacheen Carr-Ellis, a doctor at Jackson Women’s Health Organization, sued state officials Thomas Dobbs of the Mississippi State Department of Health and Kenneth Cleveland, the executive director of the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was Mississippi’s only abortion clinic and was already underfunded.^2

In the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, lawyers representing Jackson Women’s Health Organization said that the Supreme Court decisions of Roe v. Wade (1973) and Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992) had long established that abortion was a right protected under the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause. In addition, their lawyers argued that the Gestational Age Act went against a woman’s right to privacy as implied through the Ninth Amendment. And finally, they argued that Mississippi attempting to ban abortions before the age of viability, or the age when the fetus could survive outside of the womb on its own, was also unconstitutional as established in the Casey decision. Typically, a fetus is not able to survive outside the womb until their age is at least 23 weeks.^3 District Judge Carlton Reeves sided with Jackson Women’s Health Organization, stating that the Gestational Age Act was unconstitutional and Mississippi had “no legitimate state interest strong enough, prior to viability, to justify a ban on abortions.”^4 Reeves ordered Mississippi to not enforce the law. 

Mississippi appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, but it agreed with the lower court. In that decision, senior Judge Patrick Higginbotham wrote, “In an unbroken line dating to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s abortion cases have established (and affirmed, and re-affirmed) a woman’s right to choose an abortion before viability. States may regulate abortion procedures prior to viability so long as they do not impose an undue burden on the woman’s right, but they may not ban abortions.”^5

Mississippi appealed again, this time to the Supreme Court with the goal of overturning both Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, which was its original plan all along amirite. In its request for the Supreme Court, the state said that a fetus can detect pain and respond to it at 10-12 weeks gestational age and that the viability standard needed to be updated. After the Court agreed to hear the case on May 17, 2021, “pro-choice” advocates, or those who supported abortion rights, got pretty nervous since six seemingly socially conservative justices now sat on the bench. While none of them had explicitly said they would overturn the Roe and Casey decisions, millions of Americans had voted for socially conservative Presidents for decades to get justices in the Supreme Court that would do just that.

The Court heard oral arguments on December 1, 2021. Arguing for Mississippi, Scott Stewart argued that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly guarantee a right to abortion. He added that the Roe and Casey decisions should be overturned since fetal research has revealed new discoveries. Arguing for Jackson Women’s Health Organization, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said the Roe and Casey decisions should not be overturned because the Court “has never revoked a right that is so fundamental to so many Americans and so central to their ability to participate fully and equally in society.”^6

On May 2, 2022, Politico released a draft of a majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito that revealed the justices had sided with Mississippi. Well, this immediately created media fanfare and protests around the country. This leak of a draft decision was unprecedented, in fact, and definitely upset most of the Supreme Court justices, who have traditionally been proud of their ability to keep decisions under wraps until the right moment. As of the time of the recording of this video, we still don’t know who leaked the draft.

The big question the Court had to consider in this case?
Well, pretty simple, really. Was Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act unconstitutional?

The Court said “no.” On June 24, 2022, it announced it had sided with Dobbs and Mississippi. And yep, it was 6-3. Not only did the Court say that Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act was constitutional, but it said that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion. Justice Samuel Alito, who indeed wrote the majority opinion, used the Supreme Court decision Washington v. Glucksberg (1997) as precedent to back up this decision, writing, “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.”^7 This was a pretty big freaking deal, because by deciding this way, the Court overruled both Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and Roe v. Wade (1973). 

This decision caused several state legislatures to immediately pass laws to either severely limit or even outright ban all abortions. In fact, some states had passed laws already that did because they anticipated this decision. At the time of the recording of this video, at least 20 states have banned abortion or heavily restricted it.^8

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, as you could imagine, is an extremely controversial decision. According to one poll, 62% of Americans disapproved of how the Court decided.^9 Not only that, the decision has rejuvenated the “pro-choice” movement ever since. In the 2022 midterm elections, millions of Americans showed up to the polls specifically motivated to vote against those who wanted to ban or severely limit abortion.^10 The Dobbs decision revealed one thing for sure- the abortion debate isn’t going to cool off any time soon. 

I’ll see you for the next Supreme Court case, jury!

Well I don’t have a sponsor for this video but I do have stuff to promote. First all of my videos are now on Spotify, so if you’re over there, find me there. I’ll be waiting there. Patiently. Second, don’t forget I have written a book about what I think are the 100 most important Supreme Court cases in history. And finally, behind me is a newly revamped Timeline of U.S. History poster that I helped make with Useful Charts. Hey if you’re looking for some last-minute Christmas gift ideas, these two things might just be what they never knew they wanted, eh?
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^1. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/19/595045249/mississippi-governor-signs-nations-toughest-abortion-ban-into-law
^2. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/774/the-pink-house-at-the-center-of-the-world/act-seven-13
^3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11753511/
^4. https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/20/health/mississippi-abortion-ban-15-weeks-ruling/index.html
^5. Claeys, Eric (March 2022). "Dobbs and the Holdings of Roe and Casey". Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy. 20: 286 (page 5 of the PDF)
^6. Shimabukuro 2021, pp. 3–4 and Heritage Reporting Corporation 2021, pages 84–85 (pages 85–86 of the pdf)
^7. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
^8. https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/state-policies-abortion-bans
^9. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/07/06/majority-of-public-disapproves-of-supreme-courts-decision-to-overturn-roe-v-wade/
^10. https://www.npr.org/2022/11/25/1139040227/abortion-midterm-elections-2022-republicans-democrats-roe-dobbs

Check out cool primary sources here:
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/19-1392

Other sources used:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/597us1r58_gebh.pdf 
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/597/19-1392/case.pdf 
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/supreme-court-case-library/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization
https://reproductiverights.org/cases/scotus-mississippi-abortion-ban-dobbs-jackson-womens-health/ruling-overturns-roe-v-wade/
https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XjSawsyvYw 

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