Dobbs v. Jackson – Evaluating The Final Ruling

Details On the SCOTUS reversal of Roe v Wade

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Future abortion laws have to be decided by the States, with no mandates from the Court.

The final decision is out in Dobbs v. Jackson. It’s a doorstop of a document, numbering over 200 pages. The court voted 6-3 that the key prior abortion cases, Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, are to be overruled. The State of Mississippi’s law limiting abortion to pregnancies prior to 15 weeks stands. And future abortion laws have to be decided by the States, with no mandates from the Court. 

The decision is roughly in line with the leaked draft opinion.  The other pages of this decision consist of the three concurring opinions, and the dissent. This ruling has three concrete outcomes, as we had mentioned before:

1. Roe and Casey are now overturned, and void as law.

2. The State of Mississippi’s abortion law remains on the books with no modifications.

3. All future abortion matters are returned to the states to decide. Voters can vote what they want via the ballot box, and legislatures can craft laws based on that popular opinion. This will in practice lead to 15 or 20 states banning abortion tout de suite. But the other roughly thirty states could in theory keep the status quo or even liberalize access to abortion. 

As the decision itself says: “We therefore hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

This new framework will eventually see a host of these new state abortion laws entering State Supreme Courts and the US Supreme Court to iron out and to clarify. But they will take two to four years to work through the system. 

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