What you need to know about the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling and the future of abortion rights

In a much-anticipated ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overturned landmark abortion-rights case Roe v. Wade and ruled that states have the power to decide when and under what circumstances people can get abortions.

The court’s ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will limit people’s access to abortion based on the state where they live; in some states, nearly all abortions were set to become illegal as soon as the court’s decree was announced. The decision had been expected after a draft of the majority opinion was leaked in May and published by Politico.

Here’s what you need to know about the Supreme Court’s ruling:

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is based on a 2018 Mississippi law known as the Gestational Age Act that banned abortions after 15 weeks, with rare exceptions. The law was considered the nation’s most restrictive on abortion.

The Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, sued the state.

Roe v. Wade is the 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision that created a federal constitutional right to abortion. Roe was the pseudonym of a pregnant woman who challenged the constitutionality of Texas laws that had criminalized abortion.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion. “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ and ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’ ”

“The right to abortion does not fall within this category,” he continued. “Until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right was entirely unknown in American law.”

In addition to overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court on Friday also overturned Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 case that originated in Pennsylvania and whose ruling maintained the protections laid out in 1973.

» READ MORE: Read the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned the abortion protections of Roe v. Wade

The ruling was 6-3.

Justices Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and John G. Roberts Jr. voted in the majority, though Roberts recommended a “more measured course.” He said he would have preferred to “leave for another day whether to reject any right to an abortion at all.”

Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented.

Abortion access is protected in all three states — at least for now.

In Pennsylvania, people can get abortions until up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. The Abortion Control Act governs abortion access in the state and includes laws that require parental consent for teenagers under 18, a 24-hour waiting period, and consultations to discuss alternatives to abortion.

Gov. Tom Wolf has guaranteed that abortions will remain legal in Pennsylvania. But that could change in November when Pa. voters will elect a new governor. State Sen. Doug Mastriano, who is running on the Republican ticket, has said he would sign a six-week abortion ban into law if given the opportunity as governor, with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the safety of the pregnant person.

In both New Jersey and Delaware, a state law protects access to abortion. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed the state law in January to “protect reproductive freedom,” and the Delaware General Assembly in 2017 passed a law to maintain Roe v. Wade protections.

More than half of U.S. states were expected to either ban or severely restrict abortions if the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion access, policy organization the Guttmacher Institute found.

Nine of those states still have an abortion ban on the books from before Roe v. Wade was decided, and 13 states had a “trigger ban” to take effect as soon as the Supreme Court handed down a decision.

The Constitution does not mention abortion. The Supreme Court had ruled in Roe v. Wade that abortion rights were upheld based on the constitutional right to privacy in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Alito, in his opinion, wrote that abortion should not be placed into that category of constitutional rights.

Inquirer reporter Rodrigo Torrejón contributed to this article.