Roe v. Wade hangs in balance as reshaped court prepares to hear biggest abortion case in decades

When he ran for president in 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump promised to nominate Supreme Court justices who would vote to end the constitutional right to an abortion. During his four years in office, Trump placed three justices – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett – on the court, cementing a 6-3 conservative majority. With that majority in place, conservatives hope, and liberals fear, that the court will renounce nearly five decades of abortion jurisprudence and overturn the landmark rulings of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which is scheduled for oral argument on Wednesday, the justices have been asked to do just that.

If the court were to overturn Roe and Casey, access to abortion in America would shrink dramatically and immediately. Twenty-one states have laws in place that would ban all or nearly all abortions if Roe and Casey fell. And even if the court does not formally overturn Roe and Casey, a decision weakening those precedents would permit new abortion restrictions, perhaps including bans on some early-stage abortions.