Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, No. 19-1392, 597 U.S. 215 (2022), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the court held that the Constitution of the United States does not confer a right to abortion. The court's decision overruled both Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), returning to individual states the power to regulate any aspect of abortion not protected by federal statutory law.

The case concerned the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi state law that banned most abortion operations after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. The Mississippi law was based on a model by a Christian legal organization, Alliance Defending Freedom, with the specific intent to provoke a legal battle that would reach the Supreme Court and result in the overturning of Roe. Jackson Women's Health Organization—Mississippi's only abortion clinic at the time—had sued Thomas E. Dobbs, state health officer with the Mississippi State Department of Health, in March 2018. Lower courts had enjoined enforcement of the law. The injunctions were based on the ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which had prevented states from banning abortion before fetal viability, generally within the first 24 weeks, on the basis that a woman's choice for abortion during that time is protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Oral arguments before the Supreme Court were held in December 2021. In May 2022, Politico published a leaked draft majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito; the leaked draft largely matched the final decision. On June 24, 2022, the Court issued a decision that, by a vote of 6–3, reversed the lower court rulings. A smaller majority of five justices joined the opinion overturning Roe and Casey. The majority held that abortion is neither a constitutional right mentioned in the Constitution nor a fundamental right implied by the concept of ordered liberty that comes from Palko v. Connecticut. Chief Justice John Roberts agreed with the judgment upholding the Mississippi law but did not join the majority in the opinion to overturn Roe and Casey.

A large majority of American scientific and medical communities, economists, labor unions, editorial boards, Democrats, and many religious organizations (including most Jewish and Protestant denominations) opposed Dobbs, while the Catholic Church, many Evangelical Churches, and Republican politicians supported it. Protests and counterprotests over the decision occurred. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll, among others, found that most obstetricians reported increases in maternal mortality. There have been conflicting analyses of the impact of the decision on abortion rates.

Dobbs was deeply unpopular among voters and led to profound cultural changes in American society surrounding abortion. After the decision, several states immediately introduced abortion restrictions or revived laws that Roe and Casey had made dormant. As of 2023, abortion is greatly restricted in 17 states, overwhelmingly in the Southern United States. In national public opinion surveys, support for legalized abortion access rose 10 to 15 percentage points by the following year. Referendums conducted in the decision's wake in Kansas, Montana, California, Vermont, Michigan, Kentucky, and Ohio uniformly came out in favor of abortion rights, generally by margins that were both bipartisan and overwhelming.