Political | Process

“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 justices voted 6-3 to strike down Roe. Alito wrote the majority opinion, with Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett joining. Thomas and Kavanaugh filed concurring opinions, and Roberts filed another opinion concurring with the judgment. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented.

“Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws,” the dissenters wrote, “one result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens.”

The justices in the minority also criticized the majority’s “cavalier approach to overturning this Court’s precedents.”

A ruling in the case follows the unprecedented leak of the draft opinion on May 2, which signaled to the nation an imminent curtailing of decades of abortion access established under Roe and the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Alito wrote. “That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ and ’implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’”

“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” Alito added.

The high court decided Roe in 1973 under a fundamental “right to privacy” inherent in the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, protecting a woman’s choice to have an abortion in a 7-2 ruling. Years later, the court again reaffirmed Roe when it ruled in a 5-4 decision on Casey, which reversed the previous trimester framework in favor of a viability analysis, allowing states to implement abortion restrictions during the first trimester of pregnancy so long as they did not impose an “undue burden.”