The state of Mississippi has filed documents requesting that the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark ruling that effectively legalized abortion across all 50 states.
The state’s attorney general and her legal team argued that the basis for Roe and a 1992 ruling which said states may not restrict abortion before an unborn child is supposedly viable were invalid.
The filing comes as the Supreme Court considers challenges to a Mississippi ban on abortion after 15 weeks which some see as having the potential to ultimately overturn Roe v. Wade.
The law was passed in 2018 but later blocked by a federal judge. The sole abortion clinic in the state, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, continues to perform abortions up to 16 weeks.
This will be the first time a major abortion case will be heard by the court since former President Donald Trump’s three conservative justices were confirmed to the bench.
“Under the Constitution, may a State prohibit elective abortions before viability? Yes. Why? Because nothing in constitutional text, structure, history, or tradition supports a right to abortion,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch and four of her lawyers wrote in the brief filed with the court, as CBN News reported.
The team asserted that the high court’s previous rulings which limit a state’s ability to restrict abortion were “egregiously wrong.”
They pointed to gaps in medical knowledge that have been filled since 1973 that have only served to underscore the humanity of an unborn child, even in the early stages of pregnancy (note that we here at Elizabeth Johnston Ministries affirm the humanity of every child from the moment of conception).
“Today, adoption is accessible and on a wide scale women attain both professional success and a rich family life, contraceptives are more available and effective, and scientific advances show that an unborn child has taken on the human form and features months before viability,” the legal brief stated. “States should be able to act on those developments.”
NEW: In major abortion case at the Supreme Court, Mississippi is explicitly asking in court papers filed today for the justices to overturn landmark Roe v. Wade ruling pic.twitter.com/jqrscxE1I6
— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) July 22, 2021
The pro-life activist community praised the filing.
“Just read AG Fitch’s brief in the Dobbs late term abortion case,” the president of SBA List, Marjorie Dannenfelser, tweeted. “It makes it clear SCOTUS’ abortion jurisprudence is hopelessly unworkable and ungrounded in history or facts. It is long overdue for the Supreme Court to let the abortion debate move forward democratically.”
Just read AG Fitch’s brief in the Dobbs late term abortion case.
It makes it clear SCOTUS' abortion jurisprudence is hopelessly unworkable and ungrounded in history or facts.
It is long overdue for the Supreme Court to let the abortion debate move forward democratically.
— MarjorieDannenfelser (@marjoriesba) July 22, 2021
The National Right to Life Committee told the Los Angeles Times they were pleased with Mississippi’s actions.
“We thank Atty. Gen. Fitch for standing strong for the right to life and for the right of duly-elected state legislators to protect the most vulnerable among us,” the group’s president, Carol Tobias, said.
The pro-abortion community, on the other hand, accused the state of Mississippi of revealing that their intention was to see Roe v. Wade overturned, as if this would somehow have otherwise been obscured or was not the open intention of the filing.
“Today’s brief reveals the extreme and regressive strategy, not just of this law, but of the avalanche of abortion bans and restrictions that are being passed across the country,” Nancy Northup, CEO of the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights, which is defending the Jacksonville clinic, said in a statement.
There is nothing extreme about trying to stop the murder of unborn children in the womb — what is extreme is pretending that it’s perfectly normal, acceptable, and commendable to do so.
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