This panel will analyze the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, expected to be issued by the end of the current term.  The case came to the Supreme Court as a challenge to Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.  The Fifth Circuit’s decision invalidated the ban as inconsistent with longstanding Supreme Court precedent, specifically including Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), and Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt, 136 S. Ct. 2292 (2016). A draft of an opinion in Dobbs identified as authored by Justice Alito in February of this year, as leaked to and published by Politico on May 2, 2022, overrules Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).  It characterizes Roe as “egregiously wrong,” and not supported either by enumerated rights or by principles “‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ and ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty’” (citing Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 721 (1997).  The leaked draft states that it should not be taken as undermining other landmark individual liberty precedents such as Lawrence v. Texas (invalidating state criminal “sodomy” laws) and Obergefell v. Hodges (recognizing same-sex couples’ fundamental right to marry).  But at least some of the leaked draft’s reasoning obviously could be used to reverse those decisions, as well as the longstanding precedents recognizing individual privacy and bodily autonomy rights to access contraceptives, make one’s own medical decisions, and make other decisions that determine the course of one’s sexual and family life.  This panel will explore the reasoning and implications of the Court’s actual decision(s), which are expected by the end of the Court’s term.

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