Vox Sentences - Roe v. Wade v. SCOTUS

The Supreme Court hears a case that could overturn Roe v. Wade; nations around the world take precautions against the omicron strain of the coronavirus. 

Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes.

Supreme Court hears Mississippi abortion case 

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• The Supreme Court is in the midst of hearing a case that could dismantle Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case which enshrined the right to an abortion into law. The present case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, concerns the constitutionality of a Mississippi law which effectively bans abortion after 15 weeks. [Supreme Court]
• The case being argued is over a law enacted in Mississippi in 2018, the Gestational Age Act, which bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions only for serious fetal abnormalities or medical emergencies. Fetal viability — the point at which a fetus could survive outside the womb – is generally considered to be 23 or 24 weeks. [NBC / Pete Williams and Teaganne Finn]
• Roe v. Wade is the case that constitutionally safeguards the right to abortion, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 case, ruled that states could restrict abortion but couldn’t place an undue burden on people seeking one. That ruling determined that abortion could not be prohibited before fetal viability. [NYT / Adam Liptak]
• Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s only abortion provider, challenged the Mississippi law in a federal district court and won; the state of Mississippi lost its appeal and the Supreme Court finally agreed to hear the case, after putting it off several times. [SCOTUSblog / Amy Howe]
• With a new conservative majority, it looks as though the court could uphold the Mississippi law on the premise that both Roe and Casey should be overturned. With only three staunch liberals on the nine-member court, the right to abortion hangs in the balance. [WSJ / Jess Bravin and Brent Kendall]
• If Roe v. Wade is overturned, many states would severely limit or even ban abortions outright. The Supreme Court is expected to announce its ruling by summer 2022. [NPR / Nina Totenberg]

World braces for omicron’s impact

• The new omicron Covid-19 variant has appeared in more than 20 countries, including Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and the US for the first time since its discovery November 25. Although little is known about the variant’s virulence and resistance to treatment, the World Health Organization named it a “variant of concern.” [NYT / Jonathan Corum and Carl Zimmer]
• The first detected US case was found in California, in a patient who had flown from South Africa November 22. That person had been fully vaccinated and has experienced only mild symptoms so far. [CNN / Kaitlan Collins, Jacqueline Howard, and Betsy Klein]
• In the Netherlands, 61 people on two flights from Johannesburg, South Africa, to the Dutch capital Amsterdam tested positive for Covid-19 last week; of those cases, 13 were the omicron variant. [BBC]
• Just as many countries, including the US, were beginning to ease travel restrictions and open their borders to international tourists, the new variant has pushed governments to impose new ones, particularly against southern African nations. That move, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, amounts to “travel apartheid.” [Reuters / Promit Mukherjee and Trevor Hunnicutt]

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The Women’s Tennis Association has suspended its tournaments in China over concerns for the safety and freedom of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai. [Reuters / Frank Pingue]

• Magdalena Andersson has been voted into office as Sweden’s first female prime minister again, after earning the position last week and resigning due to political turmoil. [BBC / Maddy Savage]
• A girls’ high school reopened in Afghanistan’s Herat province in October, despite the Taliban’s disapproval of women’s education. [AP / Lee Keath]
• Sudan’s security forces fired tear gas on protesters marching against military rule in Khartoum. [Al Jazeera]

“We knew that it was just a matter of time before the first case of omicron would be detected in the United States.”

[Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, on news that the first omicron case had been detected in California]

What we know so far about omicron (AA-muh-kraan ... or OH-muh-kraan) [Spotify]

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