People protest about abortion outside the Supreme Court
(Picture: AP)Millions of women in the US will lose the legal right to abortion after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v Wade ruling on Friday.
The decision has been called a “slap in the face for women” and “heart-wrenching” by US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.
She said the ruling means women today have less freedoms than their mothers.
The ruling comes more than a month after a draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito indicating the court was prepared to take the historic step was leaked.
It puts the court, which had three justices appointed during the Trump Administration, at odds with a majority of Americans, according to opinion polls.
Thirteen states are expected to to introduce new restrictions or bans that will take effect within weeks.
Thousands of Americans are either protesting or celebrating outside the Supreme Court.
Former US president Barack Obama said it attacks “the essential freedoms of millions of Americans”.
“It’s a slap in the face to women about using their own judgement,” Ms Pelosi said. She said the ruling is “heart-wrenching”.
Meanwhile, anti-abortion advocates have said they are ecstatic and the ruling is a 50-year victory in the making.
Today, the Supreme Court not only reversed nearly 50 years of precedent, it relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues—attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 24, 2022
Justice Alito wrote that Roe and Planned Parenthood v Casey, the 1992 decision that reaffirmed the right to abortion, were wrong the day they were decided and must be overturned.
"We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision," Justice Alito wrote.
Regulating abortion should rest with political branches, not the courts, he said.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett joined Justice Alito. The latter three justices are Trump appointees. Thomas first voted to overrule Roe 30 years ago.
Chief Justice John Roberts would have stopped short of ending the abortion right, noting that he would have upheld the Mississippi law at the heart of the case, a ban on abortion after 15 weeks, and said no more.
Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan - the diminished liberal wing of the court - were in dissent.
"With sorrow-for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection-we dissent," they wrote.
The Biden administration and other defenders of abortion rights have warned a decision overturning Roe also would threaten other high court decisions in favor of gay rights and even potentially, contraception.
But Justice Alito wrote in his draft opinion that his analysis addresses abortion only, not other rights that also stem from a right to privacy that the high court has found implicit, though not directly stated, in the Constitution.
Abortion is different, Justice Alito wrote, because of the unique moral question it poses.
