On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled abortion as a constitutional right on a 7-2 split. Almost half a century later, that historical decision is in danger of being overturned.

This Saturday, abortion rights supporters appeared at hundreds of marches and rallies to express their outrage at the U.S. Supreme Court after a leaked draft opinion that suggested the court's conservative majority would overturn Roe v. Wade. The mood throughout the country, particularly in the capital where thousands gathered at the Washington Monument under the drizzly rain, was that of anger and defiance; coming days after the Senate failed to muster enough votes to codify Roe v. Wade.

Roe v. Wade, a case brought to attention in 1970 when a pseudonym “Jane Roe” – plaintiff Norma McCorvey (1947–2017) – instituted federal action against the district attorney of Dallas, Henry Wade. Roe asserted that women had an absolute right to terminate pregnancy in any way and at any time - a perception the Supreme Court rejected. The Court then attempted to balance the health of pregnant women and in the potential life of fetuses, claiming after which a state’s interest in the pregnant woman’s health would allow it to regulate abortion at the end of the first trimester of pregnancy. The Court noted the viability too, of a fetus, which occurs at around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

In May 2021 the Supreme Court agreed to strike down a Mississippi state law, adopted in 2018, that banned most abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy, well before the point of fetal viability. Although the law was plainly unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade, Mississippi lawmakers passed the measure in the hope that the conservative majority of justices awaiting in the Supreme Court would be of benefit. The Court agreed to one sole question regarding the case: whether all pre-viability abortions are unconstitutional.

An extraordinary insight to secrecy would be breached one year later, in May 2022, when an apparent draft indicating that the Court had voted to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked to a political news publication.

The current prediction to the overturning of Roe v. Wade is as follows:
– Abortion would become severly restricted, if not illegal, in around half of all US states.
– Individual states would have the capacity to decide whether to allow abortion, meaning the debate is out of the Court’s control and into the hands of legislators.
– Women seeking abortions could obtain them in other ways (ie. including traveling to a state where abortion is legal, ordering pills online from outside the country). Access, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, would be severely limited in many states.

Politicized and under the scrutiny of the international audience, abortion remains a contentious issue that, if made illegal, would have devestating repurcussions to every-day Americans. Many may fear a nation-wide replication of Mississippi or worse; a state with only one abortion clinic yet theoretically, still grants access.