Summary

Summary

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization challenged a 2018 Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks. At the time of its passage, the law violated the federal constitutional right to abortion established in the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade.

On March 19, 2018, the Center for Reproductive Rights and its partners sued Mississippi on behalf of Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the only remaining abortion clinic in the state. A federal district court granted a permanent injunction against the ban, which the state appealed. After the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s ruling, Mississippi appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court issued its ruling on June 24, 2022, overturning Roe v. Wade and taking away the federal constitutional right to abortion. Abandoning almost 50 years of precedent, the ruling paved the way for states to ban abortion—and marked the first time in history that the Court took away a fundamental right.

Background

Background

In the first half of the 20th century, abortion was illegal in every U.S. state. This didn’t stop people from needing care, and many died during unsafe procedures: in 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women. In response to this public health crisis, some states had begun liberalizing their abortion laws by the 1960s. But others, such as Texas, kept abortion banned entirely. In 1970, Roe v. Wade was filed on behalf of a pregnant Texas woman, arguing that Texas’ abortion ban was unconstitutional.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling struck down Texas’s ban and established a federal constitutional right to abortion. The Court recognized that the decision to continue or end a pregnancy belongs to the individual, not the government. The Court based this ruling on the specific guarantee of “liberty” in the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. constitution, which protects individuals from government interference with certain fundamental rights.

Before 1973, the U.S. already had an anti-abortion movement, but it tended to operate at the state level. After Roe, however, the movement came together as a national force. It worked to distort Americans’ views on abortion and support anti-abortion politicians at all levels of government.

In the 2000s, states doubled down on efforts to pass abortion restrictions that would invite courts to weaken the right to abortion and create a path for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe. Numerous states also began passing “trigger bans”—bans on abortion set to go into effect if Roe were overruled.

Mississippi was one of the earliest states to pass a trigger ban, with a 2007 law that banned all abortions except to save the life of the pregnant person, or in cases of rape or incest that have been reported to law enforcement. Critics noted that the state’s anti-abortion crusade failed to address its failures to actually support reproductive health: the previous year, 69% of all pregnancies in the state had been unplanned, and the state’s maternal mortality rate was almost twice the national average.

About the case

About the case

The Center for Reproductive Rights filed Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in March 2018 on behalf of Jackson Women’s Health Organization—the last remaining abortion clinic in Mississippi—to block the state’s unconstitutional ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The state enacted this ban in direct defiance of Roe and the nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedent affirming Roe’s core holding—that every pregnant person has the right to decide whether to continue their pregnancy prior to viability.

The Center filed the case just hours after then-Governor Phil Bryant signed the ban into law. The original suit also challenged several additional abortion restrictions, which did not become part of the case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

A federal district court granted emergency relief the next day, blocking enforcement of the 15-week ban. And in November 2018, the court struck down the ban because it violated decades of precedent holding that states lack the power to ban abortion before viability, concluding that “[t]he State chose to pass a law it knew was unconstitutional to endorse a decades-long campaign, fueled by national interest groups, to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision in December 2019. Writing for the court, Judge Patrick Higginbotham said: “In an unbroken line dating to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s abortion cases have established (and affirmed and reaffirmed) a woman’s right to choose an abortion before viability.”

The state of Mississippi filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on June 15, 2020, which asked the Court to review the 15-week ban. On May 17, 2021, the Supreme Court announced it would hear Mississippi’s appeal of the Fifth Circuit decision invalidating the law. In this case, the Court agreed to consider the question as to whether all pre-viability prohibitions on abortion are unconstitutional.

The case marked the first time the Supreme Court would consider a pre-viability abortion ban since Roe v. Wade in 1973.

Case details About the ruling

About the ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on June 24, 2022, overturning Roe v. Wade and ruling there is no federal constitutional right to abortion. Discarding nearly 50 years of precedent, the Dobbs decision marked the first time in history that the Supreme Court took away a fundamental right. It not only allowed Mississippi’s ban to take effect but also paved the way for other states to follow.

Adopting an unprincipled and strikingly narrow view of liberty rights, the Court held that the liberty guarantee in the Fourteenth Amendment does not encompass the right to abortion because abortion would not have been considered a fundamental right when the amendment was ratified in 1868.

The majority opinion identifies several factors that it says indicate Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Contrary to Dobbs’ flawed reasoning, each of them support the constitutional right to abortion.

• Grounding in constitutional text, history, and precedent: The Dobbs majority wrongly claims that Roe was not grounded in constitutional text, history, or precedent because the constitution makes no explicit reference to abortion.

In reality, a long line of core precedent based on the Fourteenth Amendment gives individuals control over their bodies, and the rulings in Roe are rooted in concepts of individual freedom that are central to the constitution and to our history. The Court also has a history of interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment’s liberty guarantee more expansively, including in Obergefell v. Hobbes, which established the right to gay marriage in 2015. Roe was decided 7-2, by a centrist court. Dobbs, in contrast, was a fractured decision with only 5 justices joining an opinion overturning the right to abortion after almost 50 years.

• Consistency: The Dobbs majority wrongly claims that Roe could not be understood and applied consistently.

In reality, Roe established a bright-line rule that abortion bans prior to viability violate the Constitution, a rule that every federal court applied consistently and clearly until Dobbs. Supreme Court decisions evaluating a broad range of other restrictions over almost 50 years refined how the right to abortion applies, including that courts need to consider real-world burdens on access and whether laws have actual benefits–a task at the core of the judiciary’s job to apply the constitution and safeguard individual rights. In contrast, overturning Roe created legal chaos and an unworkable patchwork of state laws, with interstate conflicts over abortion access that threaten to further upend the law. In short, Dobbs did not eliminate sticky legal questions—it created them.

• Effect on other areas of law: The Dobbs majority wrongly claims that Roe distorts other, unrelated areas of law.

In reality, it’s Dobbs that has a harmful impact on other areas of law. The ruling has set a dangerous precedent in its definition of personal liberties, opening the door for the denial of other rights. Already, Dobbs has been cited in cases restricting trans rights, student privacy, and contraception.

• Concrete harm: The Dobbs majority wrongly claims that overruling Roe would not cause concrete harm and refused to acknowledge “intangible” impacts on women’s lives and their place in society.

In reality, Dobbs had immediate and continuing devastating consequences for people’s lives, impacting their education, careers, health, families, and futures on every level. While the Court brushed aside the real-world consequences of its decision, Dobbs has already caused devastating harm. Pregnant people in states with abortion bans have been denied life-saving and health-preserving abortion care. People have been forced to carry nonviable pregnancies to term and expend significant resources to travel to other states to receive care. And women have died because of state abortion bans.

• Democratic process: The Dobbs majority wrongly claims that Roe “short-circuited the democratic process” by preventing states from restricting abortions.

In reality, a majority of Americans support abortion rights—and abortion restrictions curtail, rather than promote, civil and political liberties. Plus, by freezing rights based on the status quo of 1868, the Dobbs decision asks us to return to a time when most Americans were excluded from the democratic process: Black men did not get the right to vote until 1870, and women’s suffrage was more than fifty years away.

Impact

Impact

Dobbs has profoundly impacted the lives of millions of people across the United States. Those impacts are only continuing to grow.

• As of June 2026, 20 states have taken measures to limit access to abortion—with thirteen of these states outright banning abortion and enforcing bans with criminal penalties. Over 62 million women and girls live in states with abortion bans.
• Though all state abortion bans include exceptions for cases where the pregnant person’s life is at risk, and some contain additional exceptions for health risks, such exceptions have repeatedly failed to protect pregnant people. Hospitals across the country have refused abortion care to people experiencing life-threatening pregnancy emergencies, leading to serious illness, loss of fertility, and in some cases death. The Center has sued on behalf of women in Texas, Idaho, and Tennessee.
• The closure of reproductive health clinics and the outflux of obstetric clinicians is worsening the country’s ongoing maternal health crisis. Women in states with abortion bans are twice as likely to die during pregnancy than those in states without. They are also less likely to receive miscarriage care .
• The use of medication abortion, which can be prescribed via telehealth, has soared, accounting for nearly two-thirds of U.S. abortions as of 2023. Anti-abortion extremists are now moving to restrict access to medication abortion, including through federal lawsuits like Louisiana v. FDA, which ask courts to impose medically unnecessary barriers to access nationwide.
• As people seek abortion care from out-of-state providers, states hostile to abortion are increasingly attempting to police doctors and clinicians beyond their borders. In response, states that support abortion rights are passing “shield laws” to protect providers from legal action by other states. Inter-state legal battles are continuing to escalate.
• Dobbs marked the first time in history that the Supreme Court took away a fundamental constitutional right. Its flawed reasoning has already made its way into cases involving trans rights and contraception, threatening to further undermine constitutional protections for liberty and equality. It also raises grave concerns for other constitutional rights—including the right to make decisions about our intimate partners, how we raise our children, and whom we marry.

Timeline

Timeline

Video: case explained

Video: the case explained

Center attorneys explain the significance of Dobbs.

Video: Meet the client

Spotlight on the client: Jackson Women’s Health Organization

Staff members of Mississippi’s last remaining abortion clinic discuss their efforts to provide care in the face of numerous obstacles as they await the Supreme Court’s ruling on the future of U.S. abortion rights.

Case documents

Case documents

Amicus briefs

Amicus briefs

A broad range of experts and those most impacted by abortion restrictions filed amicus briefs (“friend of the court” briefs) urging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

These briefs were filed by leaders in constitutional law, health care, international human rights, reproductive justice, civil rights, sports and other areas; organizations representing communities most impacted by abortion restrictions; people who have had abortions; and those who have relied for decades on having the right to abortion.