US Supreme Court strikes down constitutional right to abortion

Clinics suspend services, conservative states move forward with new restrictions as Supreme Court’s decision triggers immediate action.

Pro-life activists react to the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling which overturns the landmark abortion Roe v. Wade case in front of the US Supreme Court. Picture: AFP

The Supreme Court’s decision overruling Roe v. Wade triggered immediate responses across the US, as conservative states moved forward with new abortion restrictions, some clinics suspended service and advocates on both sides of the abortion debate girded for new state-level battles.

More than 20 states were poised to ban most abortions if Roe was overturned. Some of those prohibitions took effect right away, while others may take time as state officials sort out both practical and legal details.

Minutes after the Supreme Court announced its decision, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican, said he issued an opinion allowing implementation of a state abortion ban, previously adopted by the legislature, that was triggered once the justices overruled Roe. The state law doesn’t make exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape or incest and makes performing an abortion punishable by five to 15 years in prison.

Missouri, he said on Twitter, “has become the most Pro Life state in America.”

South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem said nearly all abortions were now illegal as her state’s trigger law took effect. Planned Parenthood’s clinic in Sioux Falls, the state’s only abortion clinic, stopped providing abortions before the decision. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry likewise said his state’s trigger law banning most abortions has taken effect.

In total, 13 states have trigger laws that were designed to ban most abortions quickly if the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion.

“In the very short term there’s going to be a lot of confusion,” said Rachel Rebouché, interim dean of the Beasley School of Law at Temple University.

Abortion providers across the country rushed to accommodate to new laws, consulting with legal counsel on their next steps. It wasn’t immediately clear how many clinics stopped providing abortions Friday.

“We’re all scrambling,” said Jay Thibodeau, communications director for the Abortion Care Network. “This is chaotic.”

US braces for mass protests

The US is bracing for mass protests after the Supreme Court reversed its historic 1973 Roe V Wade judgment.

President Joe Biden slammed the 5-4 decision, which quashes almost 50 years of precedent in one of the most consequential decisions of the 9-member court in its history, as a “tragic error” that would hurt poor American women hard and vowed to pursue national legislation in Congress to enshrine abortion rights.

“This fall, Roe is on the ballot,” Biden said, speaking from the White House soon after the decision, referring to the November midterm elections, where Democrats are expected to capitalise on the Supreme Court’s decision, widely seen as a legacy of Donald Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices — Neil Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

The US Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health which was issued electronically. Picture: Getty Images

“Personal freedoms are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty, equality — they’re all on the ballot. Until then, I will do all in my power to protect a woman’s right in states where they will face the consequences of today’s decision,” the President said.

The court, in a highly anticipated decision that had been leaked to a journalist in early May, upheld in Dobbs v Jackson a law from Mississippi, which had banned abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, well before the permissible abortion term of roughly two trimesters that had been permitted by Roe v Wade.

“The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,” the court said in its majority ruling.

Justice Samuel Alito, who penned the majority decision, said the 1973 decision, which provided for a constitutional right to an abortion up to the third trimester was “egregiously wrong,” the arguments “exceptionally weak” and amounted to “an abuse of judicial authority.”

The decision, a rare occasion of the Supreme Court rejecting one of its earlier verdicts, will polarise US public opinion, which has for decades been deeply divided on the question of abortion across both party and states lines, and sharpen political battlelines in the upcoming midterm congressional elections in November.

Thousands of abortion-rights activists mass front of the U.S. Supreme Court after the decision.

Polls consistently find that a majority of Americans support legal abortion, although opinions vary over to what point in the pregnancy they should be permitted.

Crowds of hundreds celebrated and commiserated outside the gleaming white Supreme Court on Friday (Saturday AEST), where barricades had been erected to keep protesters at bay, following heightened concern for the judges safety after threats on their life.

The decision came a day after the court struck down a New York law that had restricted the carriage of guns outside the home, inflaming Democrat concerns with a court whose newly conservative hew has prompted calls among Democrats to ‘pack the court’ to neutralise the conservative majority.

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said the decision would “live in infamy”, reflecting an anger that rippled throughout Democrat politicians throughout the nation on Friday.

“Most Americans believe the decision to have a child is one of the most sacred decisions there is, and that such decisions should remain between patients and their doctors,” Ms Clinton said on social media.

Both ends of the political spectrum in the US sought to capitalise on the decision.

Left-wing Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, speaking outside the court, said the decision was “illegitimate”, urging Americans to “get into the streets”.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks to abortion-rights activists after the announcement.

Police in Dallas and New York were put on high alert reflecting concern among law enforcement authorities of a repeat of Black Lives Matter style protests that rocked the US in 2020.

Right-wing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, appeared as well, declaring the decision “awesome… a miracle”.

“I can’t believe they just did it.. I’m trying not to cry,” she said, on the short walk from the Capitol building to the front of the court.

As in Australia, US states will be able to make their own rules on abortion.

Thirteen US states had adopted trigger laws to ban abortion following any move by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe, a longstanding goal among conservative and religious activists, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Banking giant JP Morgan told employees it would pay travel costs for its employees to travel to states that permitted abortion, reflecting moves by other US corporate giants.

The three liberal justices on the court, Breyer (who has since been replaced by the first female black Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson), Sotomayer, and Kagan, in a scathing dissenting opinion said the court had “discarded balance”.

“Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws, one result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens,” they wrote.

“With sorrow — for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection — we dissent,” they concluded.

The court had to weigh the question of maintaining precedent, with its view the US constitution never did provide for the constitutional right to abortions, which are not mentioned in the US constitution.

Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by George Bush in 2005 and increasingly seen as moderate on the court, voted in favour of the majority decision but said it had gone too far in a consenting, separate opinion of his own.

“The Court’s decision to overrule Roe and Casey is a serious jolt to the legal system—regardless of how you view those cases,” he wrote.