Supreme Court Debates Abortion Rights in the United States

After almost 50 years of being sentenced as a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy nationwide, the U.S. Supreme Court is immersed this Wednesday in a debate where this right is at stake.

This Wednesday, the justices analyze whether to uphold a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks and would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

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The southern state is also asking the court to overturn the 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed the Roe vs. Wade decision. The arguments were broadcast electronically on the court's own website starting at 10:00 AM local Washington time.

Local media outlines that the court that will receive the case is a 6-3 conservative majority that has been transformed by the appointments of former President Donald Trump, who had promised to appoint judges who, he claimed, would oppose abortion.

The court had not previously agreed to hear a case on banning abortion so early in pregnancy until Trump appointees Judges Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett joined the jury.

The Mississippi state petitioners, Thomas Dobbs and Kenneth Cleveland, argue that the 15-week abortion ban should stand because the U.S. Constitution does not support abortion rights.

In this regard, finding that the law is at odds with prior protections for the viability of abortion, Dobbs and Cleveland assert that the precedent of the Roe and Casey cases should be overturned.

Lower courts have blocked the law, arguing that it violates the rights enshrined by the Supreme Court's decisions in the prior cases. With these rulings, the state cannot ban abortion before the point of fetal viability, around 24 weeks of gestation.