Lawyers for the state of Mississippi urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to overturn Roe v. Wade, taking a more aggressive approach than the one they presented when they asked the court to hear the case a year ago.
The case for overturning the two main decisions that legalized abortion in the U.S. — Roe v. Wade in 1973 and a later case, 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey — is overwhelming, the state said. “The conclusion that abortion is a constitutional right has no basis in text, structure, history, or tradition,” it said.
By ruling that a state may not impose an undue burden on a right to abortion, the Supreme Court has placed itself “at the center of a controversy that it can never resolve.”
The state is appealing lower court rulings that struck down a law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The law, the Gestational Age Act, would allow later abortions only in medical emergencies or cases of severe fetal abnormality.
When the state asked the court to take up its appeal last year, it said hearing the issues raised in its appeal “do not require the court to overturn either Roe or Casey,” adding: “They merely ask the court to reconcile a conflict in its own precedents.” But in Thursday’s filing, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said the Roe and Casey rulings were “egregiously wrong.”
