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The case, arising from a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, could undermine the constitutional right established in Roe v. Wade.

“Alarm bells are ringing loudly about the threat to reproductive rights,” Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. “The Supreme Court just agreed to review an abortion ban that unquestionably violates nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedent and is a test case to overturn Roe v. Wade.”

The Supreme Court’s next term now includes two blockbusters: the abortion case and one on whether the Second Amendment protects a constitutional right to carry guns outside the home.

(CNN)Supreme Court officials are escalating their search for the source of the leaked draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, taking steps to require law clerks to provide cell phone records and sign affidavits, three sources with knowledge of the efforts have told CNN.Some clerks are apparently so alarmed over the moves, particularly the sudden requests for private cell data, that they have begun exploring whether to hire outside counsel.

Lawyers outside the court who have become aware of the new inquiries related to cell phone details warn of potential intrusiveness on clerks' personal activities, irrespective of any disclosure to the news media, and say they may feel the need to obtain independent counsel.

Sources familiar with efforts underway say the exact language of the affidavits or the intended scope of that cell phone search -- content or time period covered -- is not yet clear. The Supreme Court did not respond to a CNN request on Monday for comment related to the phone searches and affidavits.The young lawyers selected to be law clerks each year are regarded as the elite of the elite. (Each justice typically hires four.) They are overwhelmingly graduates of Ivy League law schools and have had prior clerkships with prominent US appellate court judges.

In the first decades since Wade, the typical abortion patient was young and white; according to The American Prospect, “the typical abortion patient these days is a 20-something single mother of color.” The reasons for this are largely driven by greater socioeconomic barriers to contraception, and therefore, to abortion as well. “Women in the middle class continued to see unplanned pregnancies decline” in the 1990s when things began to change, according to The American Prospect.

Roe v. Wade decision was a landmark occasion for reproductive rights advocates and for women (though, as I noted above, women are not the only people affected.) Abortion, like birth control, is an issue that is framed as a “women’s rights issue,” when in reality, it affects women and their partners. Of course, a woman’s right to have autonomy over her body is at the heart of the debate on the pro-choice side, but intelligent conversations about sexual health and reproductive rights should be include men’s voices as well. By framing these discussions as “women’s issues,” it becomes a niche, special-interest concern, making the general public dismissive of the issues at hand at the expense of people who are most affected.

Both sides of the debate can agree that abortion is a divisive issue. It’s both personal and widespread in its nature — a basic question of how much ownership women have over their bodies, and what responsibility, if any, the government bears for the unborn — something that’s not so “one size fits all.” I’d say if you don’t believe in abortions, don’t have one; but the very option is universally unacceptable to some. As an all-or-nothing proposition, it’s impossible to find common ground.

This week, Arkansas passed one of the nation's most sweeping abortion bans to date, criminalizing any procedure unless a patient's life is at risk. But the sweep of Arkansas's proposal, which very consciously includes a ban for cases of rape and incest, isn't the only thing that stands out. Quite simply, Arkansas's latest abortion ban isn't just a law. It's a letter to the Supreme Court's conservative six -justice majority -- and a preview of the case against Roe v. Wade.

And the state says that Roe sanctioned the equivalent of Jim Crow segregation by withdrawing "legal protection" for fetal life. Arkansas would certainly know something about segregation. The state long enforced strict segregation laws and was home to one of the most gruesome race-based massacres of the Jim Crow era.

Antiabortion think tanks have published studies arguing that abortion increases the risk of everything from post-traumatic stress to depression, infertility and cancer. Antiabortion groups insist that access to abortion doesn't help women achieve equal citizenship; it makes them sick.

The landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision establishing the right to abortion arrived in January 1973. It happened during a month of milestones in a long season of American convulsions. Former president Lyndon B. Johnson died the same day Roe was handed down, two days after Richard M. Nixon was sworn in as president for a second term, and a day before Nixon would announce the Paris Peace Accords ending the Vietnam War — or so the country believed.

Now, nearly half a century later, the Supreme Court has agreed to take up a case that could finally undo Roe’s vast expansion of the judiciary’s power. But such hopes have been disappointed in the past.

Now perhaps the court will finally come to grips with the consequences of that unconstitutional ambition to be the “decider in chief” of all divisive issues. In deciding to hear a case next fall involving a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy (Roe drew the line at six months), the court will, in effect, weigh the right of states to establish their own abortion laws without regard for Roe and Casey.

The Supreme Court on Monday said it would hear a case from Mississippi that could undermine Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

The new case, concerning a state law that seeks to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, will give the court’s new 6-to-3 majority its first opportunity to address the subject, and supporters of abortion rights reacted to the development with dismay.

The Supreme Court just agreed to review an abortion ban that unquestionably violates nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedent and is a test case to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday in two cases challenging a Texas law that prohibits abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy. The stakes in these cases are great not only for the future of Roe v. Wade but also for the ability of states to violate the U.S. Constitution.

The result has been widespread closures of abortion clinics in Texas, even though women in the U.S. have a constitutional right to abortion.

Texas argues that the only way to challenge the law would be for a doctor to violate it and argue, as a defense, that the law is unconstitutional. In light of the uncertain fate of Roe v. Wade, doctors in Texas understandably don’t want to risk civil liability by violating the law.

On October 14, the conservative United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit formally blocked a trial court’s decision halting SB 8, a Texas law banning most abortions in that state.

But there are some important legal distinctions between the current challenge to SB 8, known as United States v. Texas, and the Court’s previous order in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson allowing SB 8 to take effect. Specifically, the Justice Department argues in its request for relief that the United States is allowed to sue Texas directly, even if private parties may not.

The Texas law was specifically drafted to evade judicial review.

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday effectively shut down a federal challenge to the state’s novel and controversial ban on abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, closing off what abortion rights advocates said was their last, narrow path to blocking the new law.

The Texas law, which several states are attempting to copy, puts enforcement in the hands of civilians. It offers the prospect of $10,000 rewards for successful lawsuits against anyone — from an Uber driver to a doctor — who “aids or abets” a woman who gets an abortion once fetal cardiac activity can be detected.

It is the most restrictive abortion law in the nation, and flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which prohibits states from banning the procedure before a fetus is viable outside the womb, which is currently about 23 weeks of pregnancy.

The New York Times said yesterday that she "faces distrust on the left, where she is seen as an avatar of the Democratic establishment, and raw enmity on the right."

First, it's ridiculous that the former secretary of State is being criticized for not automatically backing the woman in New York's gubernatorial primary, even though Nixon is a long shot with zero political experience. Cuomo supported Clinton's presidential bid and ran HUD in her husband's administration, so of course she's backing him. Is there some rule that female politicians have to endorse every single woman who jumps into a race, unqualified or not?

In that address, Clinton took shots at Trump, though not by name, and said of the election in a slightly self-deprecating tone: "No, I'm not over it. I still think about the 2016 election. I still regret the mistakes I made."

they wanted to know whether it was truly possible to “hit it and quit it.

one high school junior explained: “Guys need to prove themselves to their guys. So to do that, you’re going to be dominating. You’re going to maybe push. Because, it’s like the girl is just there as a means for him to get off and a means for him to brag.”

a large majority of boys never had a single conversation with their parents about, for instance, how to be sure that your partner “wants to be — and is comfortable — having sex with you,” or about what it meant to be a “a caring and respectful sexual partner.”

If she is confirmed, she would move the court slightly but firmly to the right, making compromise less likely and putting at risk the right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade.

One area in which almost no one expects surprises is abortion. Mr. Trump has vowed to appoint justices ready to overrule Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

“None of the court’s abortion decisions holds that states are powerless to prevent abortions designed to choose the sex, race and other attributes of children,” the dissent said. It added that the fetal remains law was entirely rational.

You know who really reduced abortion numbers in the U.S.? President Obama, with the Affordable Care Act.

Millions of American Christians are likely to vote for President Trump on Tuesday because they believe it a religious obligation to support a president who will appoint “pro-life” judges.

The National Association of Evangelicals and the Southern Baptist Convention both backed a limited right to abortion in the early 1970s, and an article in The Baptist Press welcomed the ruling in Roe v. Wade for advancing “religious liberty, human equality and justice.” A 1970 poll found that about two-thirds of Southern Baptist pastors supported allowing abortion in cases such as rape, deformity or a risk to the mother’s physical or mental well-being.

Republican Senator Jason Rapert and Rep. Mary Bentley filed a bill on Wednesday that would make abortion illegal in Arkansas except when the mother’s life is at stake.

If passed, the bill will generally prohibit abortion in Arkansas and give the U.S. Supreme Court an opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and other pro-abortion decisions.

A conservative education and research organization, Family Council, showed support for the bill.

The constitutional right to abortion is under concerted attack by a deeply conservative Supreme Court. Last month, the Supreme Court permitted Texas’ ban on abortion at six weeks to go into effect in a one-paragraph ruling decided without full briefing and oral argument,

On Dec. 1, the court will consider the constitutionality of Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In Dobbs, Mississippi is urging the Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade and take away from millions of Americans the fundamental right to control their bodies, choose whether and when to start a family, determine their life course, and participate as equals in American life.

the text and history of the 14th Amendment provide no support for the idea that the courts should look to state practice in 1868 to define the scope of the amendment’s protections.

All were now wearing masks. All, that is, except Justice Neil Gorsuch. What's more, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was not there at all, choosing instead to participate through a microphone setup in her chambers.

She has been the only justice to wear a mask on the bench since last fall when, amid a marked decline in COVID-19 cases

They all did. Except Gorsuch, who, as it happens, sits next to Sotomayor on the bench. His continued refusal since then has also meant that Sotomayor has not attended the justices' weekly conference in person, joining instead by telephone.

Until now, all the court's abortion decisions have upheld Roe's central framework — that women have a constitutional right to an abortion in the first two trimesters of pregnancy when a fetus is unable to survive outside the womb, until roughly between 22 and 24 weeks.

In this case, Mississippi contends that Roe and Casey were egregiously wrong and undemocratic rulings. State Attorney General Lynn Fitch told the Explicitly Pro-Life podcast that abortion "needs to be given back to the states. The unelected judiciary don't need to be making those decisions for us. ... We all elect our legislators ... and then you know what? They're accountable."

Mississippi says it put its 15-week ban into place, in part, because abortions are more dangerous later in pregnancy. Not so, says American Medical Association President Gerald Harmon: "We know that the risk of death during or after childbirth is substantially more than the risk of death ... from an abortion," he says.

He said the “primary story that Republicans have been telling about the economy is not supported by the facts; it’s just not.” But he said that narrative was being distributed across the country by conservative news media, talk radio and Republican politicians.

“If you’re hearing that story all of the time, you start believing it,” Mr. Obama said. His mission, he told the crowd, was to try to counter that story as the general election campaign gets underway: “I’m here to say, Elkhart, we’ve got to challenge the assumptions behind this economic story.”