Last year, when Mississippi argued in favor of its 15-week abortion ban in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the state claimed that women have made such great economic strides in the past five decades that Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision establishing the constitutional right to an abortion, is no longer necessary.
Julie Rikelman, litigation director of the Center for Reproductive Rights, made the exact opposite argument: Decades of research, she says, show that abortion access is critical to women’s equal participation in society. Things might be better for women now than they were 50 years ago, but overturning Roe would set that progress back.
