The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on December 1, 2021 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case challenging Mississippi’s unconstitutional ban on abortion care after 15 weeks. With a 6–3 conservative majority, whatever SCOTUS decides will have far-reaching consequences. 

Abortion care is legal and available in all 50 states and DC — but this case is cause for alarm. 

Mississippi is one of thirteen states that recently passed unconstitutional pre-viability abortion bans, including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Utah. In 2019, Mississippi also passed a 6- week abortion ban. Mississippi’s 15- week ban is the first of those bans to make it to the Supreme Court.

Independent clinics are leading the way once again. They provide the majority of abortion care in the United States, including when and where others do not; operating in the most politically hostile states. Many, like Jackson Women’s Health Organization — the independent clinic at the center of this case — are the last remaining abortion clinics in their states or regions.

This case is a direct challenge to Roe. There is no path for the Supreme Court to uphold Mississippi’s ban without overturning Roe’s core holding—that every pregnant person has the right to decide whether to continue their pregnancy prior to viability.

ACN’s network of independent abortion care providers and fierce defenders of abortion access are working to ensure people across the U.S. are able to navigate the countless financial, logistical, and legal barriers to abortion — but the fight just got much more difficult, and they need your support.