Mississippi’s attorney general asks Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade

Mississippi’s attorney general urged the Supreme Court in a Thursday brief to overrule Roe v. Wade next term when the justices review Mississippi’s ban on virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Calling the court’s precedent on abortion “egregiously wrong,” Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R) explicitly set the dispute over Mississippi’s restrictive law on a collision course with the landmark 1973 decision in Roe that first articulated the constitutional right to abortion.

“This Court should overrule Roe and Casey,” Fitch wrote, referring also to the court’s 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. “Roe and Casey are egregiously wrong. They have proven hopelessly unworkable. … And nothing but a full break from those cases can stem the harms they have caused.”

Background: The Supreme Court agreed earlier this year to hear arguments over a Mississippi law that bans mostly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

With a 6-3 conservative majority in the court since Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation, Republicans hope the justices will override the landmark abortion rights case.