Roe v Wade overturned; Supreme Court of United States strikes down right to abortion

The Supreme Court of the United States of America (SCOTUS) on Friday [ET] overturned its landmark decision in Roe v Wade and effectively struck down the constitutional right to abortion in the country..The SCOTUS overturned the 1973 judgment by a 5-4 vote which leaves it to individual states in the USA to decide on the legality or otherwise of abortion."The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives," the judgment held.Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett gave the majority opinion.The four justices who voted against overruling Roe v Wade were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.The Court by a 6-3 majority upheld a law enacted by the State of Mississippi banning abortion when the foetus is more than 15 weeks old. Chief Justice Roberts upheld the law while voting against overruling Roe v Wade.On the law specifically he held,"Ample evidence thus suggests that a 15-week ban provides sufficient time, absent rare circumstances, for a woman “to decide for herself ” whether to terminate her pregnancy."However, on Roe v Wade he held, "I would decide the question we granted review to answer—whether the previously recognized abortion right bars all abortion restrictions prior to viability, such that a ban on abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy is necessarily unlawful. The answer to that question is no, and there is no need to go further to decide this case. I therefore concur only in the judgment.".The Court's decision came in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organisation, wherein the State of Mississippi had sought to invalidate Roe v Wade, and to instead allow elected officials to decide how abortion should be regulated or prohibited.The decision in Dobbs upheld a 2018 Mississippi law that banned abortions for women 15-weeks pregnant, roughly two months earlier than the precedent in Roe v Wade allowed..Abortion remains a divisive issue in American politics and the USA was unable to codify Roe v Wade into law. Given the current composition of the Court with a majority of conservative justices, the Court appeared poised to uphold the Mississippi law and bringing back the abortion issue to the States.An early draft opinion in the case was leaked last month which also suggested the court was preparing to overrule Roe and withdraw federal protections for abortion rights..Even before the ruling, States had started passing restrictive abortion laws. In May 2022, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed a 15-week abortion ban in Florida. The State of Kentucky banned abortions after 15 weeks and mandated extremely strict compliance with regulations on abortion clinics. The law in the State of Oklahoma considers abortion a felony offence and punishes anyone convicted of performing one with a decade in prison and a $100,000 fine. .[Read Judgment]