Dobbs and the Shaky Foundations of Roe, by Thomas Ascik

By Thomas Ascik, Crisis Magazine, Dec. 3, 2021

Thomas Ascik is a retired federal prosecutor. He writes from North Carolina. His writing has appeared in a variety of publications including Catholic World Report, The Federalist, and The Imaginative Conservative.

In the oral arguments in the much-anticipated Mississippi abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization heard in the Supreme Court Wednesday, there was little discussion of the details of abortion. Instead, the status of the Court’s major precedents and the Court’s power and influence in American life were the main subjects.

The immediate subject of the case is a 2018 Mississippi statute that outlaws abortion after 15 weeks gestation “except in a medical emergency or in the case of a severe fetal abnormality.”  The statute requires abortionists to determine and file a report concerning the “probable gestational age” of the “unborn human being.”  …