Supreme Court overturns Roe; states now set their own abortion laws

For nearly fifty years, Roe v. Wade had set the constitutional floor for abortion access in the United States — until Mississippi's 2018 Gestational Age Act, which banned most abortions after fifteen weeks, gave the Court a vehicle to revisit it. On June 24, 2022, six justices voted to reverse lower-court rulings blocking the Mississippi law; five of them went further, joining Samuel Alito's majority opinion declaring that the Constitution confers no right to abortion and overturning both Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Authority to regulate abortion returned to the states that afternoon…