The debates around the rights of women and the autonomy they have over their bodies have intensified as United States Supreme Court has decided by an international majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, the court’s historical judgment that determined abortion to be a constitutional right. On Monday Politico released the first draft of the court’s majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito in the ‘Thomas E Dobbs, State Health Officer of the MississippiDepartment of Health vs. Jackson Women’s Health organisation’, which is being popularly referred to as the “Mississippi case”.
The leaked draft
The draft obtained by the Politico confirmed as legit by the Supreme Court shows that the judgment has overruled two landmark cases that upheld the right to abortion. The two cases are– Roe v. Wade of 1973 and Planned Parenthood v. Casey of 1992.
These crucial judgments became a turning point for women’s rights as they gave the choice to women to terminate pregnancies up to the point of foetal viability. This judgment became the base judgment for several lower courts over the course of time to block several state laws that restricted abortion before foetal viability.
It is important to understand the term foetal viability in this context. Foetal viability simply put, is the time after which a foetus can survive outside the womb. This process assesses’ the women’s choice to abort and the legality around it. In the Roe’s judgment, foetal viability was determined at 28 weeks that is 7 months into pregnancy.
However, due to advancements in the medical field, the experts agree that the viability determination grounds have been reduced to 23 or 24 weeks that is 6 months into pregnancy. Newer studies further show that this can be brought down to 22 weeks.
On reaching the foetal viability stage the foetus can separate from the women in terms of rights. That is the reason behind using this criterion as a measure to decide. The length of pregnancy is calculated from the last menstrual cycle a woman goes through.
Mostly, the pregnancy is identified and addressed after the sixth week. The stringent time period associated with pre-viability leaves minimal time for women to actually make a decision.
The people opposing abortions, however, consider this metric used by the world to be unjust.
The historical landmarks
In 2018, the Republican- majority of the state of Mississippi banned abortions after merely 15 weeks of detecting pregnancy. This timeline surpassed the Roe judgment. This law was blocked by a district judge. On March 19, 2019, Republican Governor Phil Bryant signed the controversial “heartbeat” abortion law. This law made abortion almost impossible with restrictive measures like the foetus can’t be aborted once the cardiac activity is detected. The cardiac activity that is the heartbeat in a foetus is detected in 6 weeks of pregnancy. The law didn’t make any exceptions even if a pregnancy takes place because of rape or incest.
The law said that the physician who conducted an abortion after detecting the heartbeat will have his/her medical license dismissed.
However, this law was overturned in February 2020. The 2018 law reached the Supreme Court as well but a decision will be taken in June or July 2022.
What will happen now as the laws one the laws are overturned?
A breakdown of the laws in an article in the Indian Express by Apurva Vishwanath, explains that there is no federal law protecting the right to abortion in the U.S. Supreme Court overturned means it will give complete authority to the states to come up with abortion laws for the area they have their jurisdiction in.
A study by the New York times shows an estimate of 22 states that will most probably move towards a complete ban or extremely stringent rules regarding abortion. This will heavily affect the women who are poor and with limited access to healthcare.
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