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# Supreme Court Overturns Roe and Casey, Ending Federal Constitutional Right to Abortion After Nearly 50 Years
- URL: https://www.theamericanquorum.com/taq-historical-2022-06-25-us/
- Published: 2022-06-26T03:59:00.000Z
- Updated: 2022-06-26T03:59:00.000Z
- Description: The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion law and 5-4 to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, returning abortion policy to elected governments.
- Author: TAQ Staff
- Tags: US, #Import 2026-08-31 13:56

The Supreme Court on Friday overturned *Roe v. Wade* and *Planned Parenthood v. Casey*, ending nearly five decades in which the Constitution was understood to protect a right to abortion before fetal viability and returning authority over abortion policy to Congress and the states. The ruling immediately reshapes law and politics across the country, with some states moving to prohibit most abortions and others pledging to preserve access.

In [Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392%5F6j37.pdf?ref=theamericanquorum.com), Justice Samuel Alito wrote for a five-justice majority that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion and that *Roe* and *Casey* must be overruled. Chief Justice John Roberts agreed that Mississippi’s 15-week law should be upheld but would not have gone as far as eliminating the constitutional right entirely. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented.

## A Mississippi law becomes the vehicle for a national reversal

The dispute arose from Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, which generally bars abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy except in a medical emergency or in cases of severe fetal abnormality. That law directly conflicted with the viability line that had governed abortion regulation under *Roe* and *Casey*. The Supreme Court’s [case docket](https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/19-1392.html?ref=theamericanquorum.com) records Friday’s judgment reversing the Fifth Circuit and remanding the case after the justices concluded that Mississippi may enforce its law.

The majority’s reasoning is broader than the Mississippi statute. It says abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution and that a claimed unenumerated right must be deeply rooted in the nation’s history and tradition and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. The Court concluded that abortion did not meet that test. It also rejected the viability standard as one the Constitution itself does not supply and said the issue should be resolved through democratic processes.

That directly repudiates the central holding of the Court’s 1973 [Roe decision](https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113?ref=theamericanquorum.com), which located a constitutional privacy interest broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether to terminate a pregnancy. It also overturns the 1992 [Casey decision](https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/505/833?ref=theamericanquorum.com), which reaffirmed what it called Roe’s essential holding while replacing Roe’s trimester framework with an undue-burden test for restrictions before viability.

## The majority and dissent disagree sharply over precedent

Stare decisis — the principle that courts should generally follow precedent — is at the center of the disagreement. The majority said precedent is not an inexorable command and argued that *Roe* was egregiously wrong, weakly reasoned and damaging to democratic debate. Alito’s opinion compared the decision to other occasions when the Court has overruled major constitutional precedents.

The dissent argued that the Court was discarding a settled liberty on which generations of Americans have relied. Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan wrote jointly that the ruling allows states to compel pregnancy and childbirth from the moment of fertilization and warned that the logic used to reject abortion rights could put pressure on other substantive-due-process precedents.

The majority expressly said its decision concerns abortion and should not be understood to cast doubt on precedents involving other rights. Justice Clarence Thomas, however, wrote separately that the Court should reconsider substantive-due-process decisions involving contraception, same-sex intimacy and same-sex marriage. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately that the Constitution is neutral on abortion and that the decision does not authorize states to restrict interstate travel for the purpose of obtaining an abortion elsewhere.

## Federal officials acknowledge immediate limits

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a [Justice Department statement](https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/attorney-general-merrick-b-garland-statement-supreme-court-ruling-dobbs-v-jackson-women-s?ref=theamericanquorum.com) that the department strongly disagrees with the ruling but will continue enforcing federal laws that protect access to reproductive-health services. Garland emphasized that states may not ban the abortion medication mifepristone merely because they disagree with the Food and Drug Administration’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy, and he said federal law continues to protect the right to travel from a state where abortion is prohibited to one where it is legal.

President Joe Biden called the ruling a major reversal and urged Congress to restore abortion protections through federal legislation. In remarks reported Friday by [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/24/biden-condemns-supreme-court-dobbs-jackson?ref=theamericanquorum.com), Biden said executive action alone cannot reestablish the right that the Court eliminated and argued that voters will determine whether Congress has the votes to codify abortion protections.

The decision therefore transfers the center of the conflict from federal constitutional doctrine to legislatures, elections and state courts. Some states have laws designed to take effect automatically or shortly after Roe is overturned. Others have statutes or constitutional protections that preserve abortion access. The practical legal map is likely to become more fragmented immediately, with rules differing sharply across state lines.

## A new constitutional baseline

The Court’s ruling does not itself prohibit abortion nationwide. Instead, it removes the federal constitutional barrier that prevented governments from banning abortion before viability. State abortion laws will now generally be reviewed under the much more deferential rational-basis standard, meaning they are likely to survive federal constitutional challenge if lawmakers can identify a legitimate state interest.

That is a fundamental shift in the balance of authority. For nearly half a century, federal courts decided whether abortion restrictions crossed constitutional lines established by *Roe* and later *Casey*. After *Dobbs*, elected governments will have far greater freedom to set policy, while courts will address a new set of questions involving state constitutions, interstate travel, medication, emergency care and conflicts between federal and state law.

The political consequences are equally immediate. Abortion policy will now vary not only by region but potentially by election cycle, legislative control and ballot initiative. Congress could attempt to establish nationwide rules, although any such measure would face close votes and likely litigation over federal authority.

Friday’s decision is therefore both the conclusion of one constitutional era and the beginning of another. The Supreme Court has upheld Mississippi’s 15-week restriction and removed the constitutional framework that governed abortion regulation since 1973\. The consequences now move outward — to statehouses, Congress, clinics, courts and voters — under a legal landscape in which Roe and Casey no longer control.