Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will be heard by the Supreme Court on December 1, in a case that could lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The Mississippi law could also affect Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 Supreme Court case in which the court agreed with Roe that abortion is a constitutional right, but only through viability.
The Gestational Age Act was passed in Mississippi in 2018, and restricts abortions after 15 weeks (approximately four months), unless there is a medical emergency or a severe fetal abnormality. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the only abortion business in the state, filed a lawsuit, and the law was struck down twice by federal courts.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court announced they would hear the case, and not long after, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed a brief seeking an answer to whether all pre-viability prohibitions on abortions are unconstitutional.
“A lot has changed in the five decades since Roe, yet it shackles states to an outdated view of facts and prevents them from protecting legitimate interests in the context of current science and culture,” Fitch told Live Action News. “In my brief, I ask the Court to set things right and return abortion policy to the political branches where debate can flourish and the will of the people can be discerned at the ballot box.”
READ: 18 state AGs ask Supreme Court to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban
Though many abortion activists have claimed that the law attacks women, it will actually help protect women from dangerous abortion businesses, like Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Diane Derzis, the owner of the abortion facility, has a horrifying background in Birmingham, Alabama. There, the facility she owned sent three women to the hospital on the same day, and her facility was found to have 76 pages worth of violations. Derzis seems to have continued to employ the same abortionist responsible for the injuries in Alabama — Bruce Eliot Norman — at Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Mississippi. The business model in Alabama was so dangerous that Derzis was forced to sell, and ordered not to have any affiliation with the Alabama facility. It appears that little has changed with how Derzis conducts business.
As the original law points out, abortion risks increase as pregnancy progresses, with complications including infection, blood clots, hemorrhage, and perforation of the cervix, uterus, bowel, or bladder. The bill explains that after 15 weeks, “there is a higher risk of requiring a hysterectomy, other reparative surgery, or blood transfusion.”
Governors from multiple other states filed an amicus brief in August showing their support for the law.
“The Court should take this opportunity to correct the mistakes in its abortion jurisprudence and recognize that the text and original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment have nothing to do with abortion,” the brief read. “Rather than creating a federal constitutional right, the Court should leave regulating abortion to the States, where the people may act through the democratic process.”
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