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![handle is hein.crs/govehxa0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional_______
R a esearch Service
Supreme Court Rules No Constitutional Right
to Abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's
Health Organization
June 27, 2022
On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women 's Health
Organization, a case challenging the constitutionality of Mississippi's Gestational Age Act, which
generally prohibits an abortion once a fetus's gestational age is greater than 15 weeks. By a 6-3 decision,
the Court upheld the Mississippi law, and a five-Justice majority more broadly overruled the Court's prior
decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v Casey, determining
that the U.S. Constitution does not confer a right to an abortion. By overruling Roe and Casey, the Court
maintained that it was returning the regulation of abortion to the people and their elected representatives.
As of the date of this Sidebar, 13 states have adopted so-called trigger laws that prohibit abortion and take
effect once a constitutional right to abortion is no longer recognized. Following Dobbs, other abortion
restrictions, such as restrictions on the availability of medication abortion, are expected.
Writing for the Court in Dobbs, Justice Alito described Roe as egregiously wrong from the start because
the Constitution makes no reference to abortion and a right to the procedure is not implicitly protected by
any constitutional provision. While the Court in Roe and Casey determined that a right of privacy derived
from the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty under the Due Process Clause was broad
enough to encompass a right to abortion, the Dobbs Court characterized these earlier decisions as
remarkably loose in [their] treatment of the constitutional text and hav[ing] enflamed debate and
deepened division.
The majority explained that, in evaluating whether the Constitution confers a right to an abortion, the Due
Process Clause can guarantee some rights not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. It indicated,
however, that substantive due process rights such as a right to abortion may be found only when they are
deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition and are implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.
Reviewing common law and statutory restrictions on abortion before and after the Fourteenth
Amendment's ratification, the majority maintained that the inescapable conclusion is that a right to
abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation's history and traditions. The majority emphasized, for
example, that abortion was prohibited in three-quarters of the states when the Fourteenth Amendment was
Congressional Research Service
https://crsreports. congress.gov
LSB10768
CRS Legal Sidebar
Prepared for Members and
Committees of Congress](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.crs/govehxa0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)