GOP Governors’ “friend of the court” brief support Governor Reeves, AG Fitch’s position on behalf of Mississippi.
Last week, Thirteen Republican Governors filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and other abortion cases. The officials ask the court to let states make their own rules on abortions that take place after 15 weeks.
The “friend of the court” brief was filed by South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster in the Mississippi abortion case.
“The time has come to return the question of abortion to where it belongs—with the States,” they wrote in the filing.
This takes place after the Supreme Court made the decision to take up Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban in May of this year.
“We support the petition to the Supreme Court because similar to Mississippi’s law, Utah’s law prohibiting elective abortions after 18 weeks is constitutional. Nothing in the Constitution prevents states from enacting reasonable measures to safeguard the dignity of all human beings, including the unborn,” Utah Solicitor General Melissa Holyoak said in a statement to FOX 13 on Thursday.
In late July, Mississippi’s Attorney General Fitch filed a brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health abortion ban case. AG Fitch defended the right of the people to pass laws that will protect the unborn as well as women’s health.
Fitch asks the Court to consider the policy and cultural shifts that have occurred in the decades since Roe. The AG argues that science and society have changed since Roe v. Wade and that the Legislature should respond to those advances.
Governor Tate Reeves told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” that the question is not are you going to overturn Roe v. Wade, but rather has the science changed.
“Therefore, it makes sense for the court to review their decisions from the past and this is a vehicle in which for them to do it,” Reeves said.
Anne Summerhays
