Abortion at SCOTUS: Potential Cases this Term and Possible Rulings

A new KFF issue brief examines the implications of a Supreme Court with a solid conservative majority. Two abortion cases have pending requests for Supreme Court review: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and FDA v. ACOG. If the Court chooses to take these cases, abortion laws and who can legally challenge them could be affected in major ways, including:

• The option for doctors and clinics to challenge laws regulating abortion on behalf of their patients could be eliminated, and only patients themselves could challenge the laws.
• The constitutional right to an abortion established in Roe v. Wade could be overturned allowing states to ban or further restrict abortion.
• The legal standard for evaluating abortion laws’ constitutionality could be changed.

Read the brief, Abortion at SCOTUS: A Review of Potential Cases this Term and Possible Rulings, for the detailed history and legal issues in question for the two abortion cases pending the Supreme Court’s review.
Also available is A Reconfigured U.S. Supreme Court: Implications for Health Policy, for a broader discussion on health care cases to be reviewed or potentially coming before the Court in the current term.