With Friday’s historic Supreme Court decision in favor of the state of Mississippi in the case of Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade, below is a look at how we got to this point.
What does overturning Roe mean?:What we know about the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling.
March 19, 2018
Then-Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed Mississippi House Bill 1510 into law on March 19, 2018. The measure passed during the 2018 regular session of the Mississippi Legislature.
HB 1510 also known as Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act provides that “[e]xcept in a medical emergency or in the case of a severe fetal abnormality, a person shall not intentionally or knowingly perform . . . or induce an abortion of an unborn human being if the probable gestational age of the unborn human being has been determined to be greater than fifteen (15) weeks.”
“We will probably get sued here in about a half hour,” Bryant said in a signing ceremony video posted on his official Facebook page on March 19, 2018. “That will be fine with me. It is worth fighting over.”
March 20, 2018
It may not have been within a half hour of the bill’s signing, but the next day, Jackson Women’s Health Organization doctor Sacheen Carr-Ellis sued the state and Thomas E. Dobbs, then-state health officer with the Mississippi State Department of Health and others challenging the constitutionality of the legislation.
The clinic argued the state law conflicted with the court’s Roe v. Wade decision from 1973, which found a constitutional right to abortion, and upheld in Planned Parenthood v. Casey from 1992.
Nov. 20, 2018
On Nov. 20, 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves ruled in favor of the Women’s Health Organization and blocked the 15-week ban ruling that the law amounts to an unconstitutional ban on abortion prior to viability.
Dec. 13, 2019
The state appealed Reeves’ decision to the Fifth Circuit court which upheld Reeves’ decision on Dec. 13, 2019.
June 2020
The state appealed the Firth Circuit’s decision to the United States Supreme Court in June 2020.
December 2021
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case on Dec. 1, 2021.
June 24, 2022
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the State and overturned Roe v. Wade.
The ruling stated the Constitution provided no right to abortion, overturning nearly 50 years of precedent and sending the legality of the procedure to state legislatures to determine.
