Supreme Court Seems Poised to Uphold Mississippi’s Abortion Law

It was less clear whether the court’s conservative majority would overrule Roe v. Wade, the decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion.

The Supreme Court seemed poised on Wednesday to uphold a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, in what would be a momentous and polarizing decision to roll back the abortion rights the court has defined over the last half century.

During sometimes tense and heated questioning in almost two hours of oral arguments, the court’s six conservative justices signaled they are comfortable with the Mississippi law, even though upholding it would be flatly at odds with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion and prohibited states from banning the procedure before fetal viability, currently around 23 weeks.

Moving that line to 15 weeks would discard decades of precedent. Several of the conservative justices appeared ready to go further and overrule Roe entirely, letting states decide whether and when to ban abortions — an outcome that would transform regulation of abortion in 20 or more states that have been seeking to impose more restrictions and that would further inflame the long-running political and cultural divisions over the issue.