US Supreme Court Overturns Abortion Ruling

By Staff, Agencies

The US Supreme Court has overturned Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling that granted the right to abortion for nearly five decades in the United States, in what President Joe Biden has described as a “sad day” for the country.

In a decision released on Friday, the country’s top court ruled in a Mississippi case that “the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion”. The justices voted 6-3, powered by the court’s conservative supermajority.

“The authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,” the ruling reads.

The decision follows the leak last month of a draft opinion indicating that Roe v Wade would be overturned.

More than two dozen US states are likely to ban abortion now that the 1973 legal precedent has been overturned.

“The health and life of women in this nation is now at risk,” Biden said during a live address on Friday afternoon, describing the Supreme Court’s ruling as “a sad day for the court and for the country”.

“State laws banning abortion are automatically taking effect today, jeopardizing the health of millions of women,” Biden added.

In Friday’s ruling, the justices held that the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortions performed before a fetus would be viable outside the womb – between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy – was wrongly decided because the US Constitution makes no specific mention of so-called "abortion rights".