Abortion providers warn Supreme Court upholding Mississippi law would lead to outright bans

Washington — Abortion providers challenging a Mississippi ban on the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy warned the Supreme Court that allowing the law to stand would upend 50 years of precedent and open the door for other states to outlaw abortion outright.

The clinics told the high court in a brief filed Monday that it should reject Mississippi's request for it to overrule Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established a woman's right to an abortion. The state's argument, they said, "amounts to the same thing: a request that the Court scuttle a half-century of precedent and invite states to ban abortion entirely." The Supreme Court will hear the blockbuster dispute over Mississippi's abortion law in its upcoming term, which begins in October. While the state initially told the court that letting the 15-week ban stand did not require overturning its abortion precedents, Mississippi officials then argued last month they should be reversed, a request that came after the high court agreed to hear the case and its conservative majority widened to 6-3.