(National Catholic Reporter. Kate Scanlon).
Nearly two years after the Supreme Court overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision making abortion a constitutional right, a majority of Americans said they support legal abortion in all or most cases, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center. The Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on June 24, 2022, in a case involving a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks, where the state directly challenged the high court’s previous abortion-related precedents in Roe v. Wade and the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision. The Supreme Court ultimately overturned its own prior rulings, undoing nearly a half-century of its own precedent that held abortion was a constitutional right and returning the issue to the legislature. In the two years since that ruling, individual states have moved to either restrict abortion or expand access to it.