WASHINGTON, July 22 (Xinhua) -- The attorney general in southern U.S. state Mississippi on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade when reviewing the state's ban on virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
In her 60-page brief, Lynn Fitch, a Republican, explicitly set the dispute over Mississippi's state law on a collision course with the landmark 1973 decision in Roe that first articulated the constitutional right to abortion, calling the highest court's precedent on abortion "egregiously wrong."
"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," she argued.
The Mississippi law, passed in 2018 and to be reviewed during the Supreme Court's upcoming term beginning in October, creates only narrow exceptions from its 15-week ban.
Supreme Court precedent tracing back to Roe prohibits states from banning abortion before fetal viability, which occurs around 24 weeks, according to a report by The Hill.
There are hundreds of abortion measure state legislatures passed in recent years, many with the explicit goal of overturning Roe v. Wade, said the report. Enditem
