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1 1 (December 13, 2021)

handle is hein.crs/goveezh0001 and id is 1 raw text is: S Congressional __ *Research Service Supreme Court Considers Mississippi Abortion Law December 13, 2021 On December 1, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a case involving the constitutionality of Mississippi's Gestational Age Act (GAA), which generally prohibits an abortion once a fetus's gestational age is greater than 15 weeks. In Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, two of the Court's seminal abortion decisions, the Court recognized viability, the point in a fetus's development when it is potentially able to live outside of the mother's womb, as the earliest time at which a state may prohibit the performance of an abortion. In Roe and Casey, the Court recognized viability as occurring at around 23 to 24 weeks. Mississippi's Solicitor General argued that the GAA should be upheld despite Supreme Court precedent restricting abortion prohibitions before fetal viability. The state contended that Roe and Casey were wrongly decided and maintained that the GAA furthers valid state interests in protecting the unborn and women's health. Background In 1973, the Supreme Court concluded in Roe that the U.S. Constitution protects a woman's decision to terminate her pregnancy. Justice Blackmun, writing for himself and six other Justices, determined that a right of privacy derived from the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty under the Due Process Clause and recognized by the Court in prior decisions, was broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The decision in Roe followed several Court decisions describing a right of privacy that extended to activities related to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education. While the Court in Roe recognized a woman's constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy, it also determined that the right had to be weighed against a state's important interests in promoting maternal health and protecting potential life. The Court held that the state's interests become sufficiently compelling to allow regulation of the abortion procedure at certain points during pregnancy, and established the so-called trimester framework to examine such regulations. Finding that an abortion is no more dangerous to maternal health than childbirth in the first trimester of pregnancy, the Court concluded that the compelling point for regulating abortion to further a state's interest in maternal health was at approximately the end of the first trimester-that is, at about 12 weeks. Until that point, the Court Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB10669 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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