Anti-abortion protesters gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC after Roe v. Wade was overturned on Friday, June 24.
Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP
Updated 1613 GMT (0013 HKT) 1 July 2022
Anti-abortion protesters gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC after Roe v. Wade was overturned on Friday, June 24.
Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP
The US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, June 24, ruling that there is no longer a federal constitutional right to abortion.
It is the Supreme Court’s most consequential decision in decades and overturns nearly 50 years of precedent. Going forward, abortion rights will be determined by the states unless Congress decides.
At least 21 states already have laws or constitutional amendments in place that would prompt them to try to ban abortions as quickly as possible, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. And four more states are likely to ban abortions as soon as possible without federal protection.
The vote was 5-4 in favor of overturning Roe, and it was made possible by a solid conservative majority, including three of Donald Trump’s nominees.
“Rue was egregiously wrong from the start,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority. “His reasoning was extremely weak and the decision had disastrous consequences.”
Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented, saying women’s rights were under attack. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a concurring opinion that he would not overturn Roe; he would only support Mississippi’s law banning abortions after 15 weeks.
Here are some of the stories that made headlines this past week, as well as some photos that caught our eye.
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