The Supreme Court threw out Roe v. Wade.

[The landmark Supreme Court decision that made access to safe and legal abortion a constitutional right, Roe v. Wade, has been struck down 49 years after it became the law of the land. In the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case handed down Friday, the Supreme Court overturned Roe in a 6-3 decision, essentially allowing individual states and jurisdictions to pursue abortion bans. In other words, reproductive freedom is no longer a constitutionally protected right throughout the United States.

"The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion, Roe and Casey are vacated, and the power to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives," the decision states.

A draft of the ruling was leaked to Politico in May, causing widespread uproar. Prior to the ruling, President Biden stated that he was considering a presidential decree aimed at protecting reproductive freedom in response to the ruling, but Vox noted that the decree could not directly challenge the ruling.

More than a dozen states have already enacted "trigger laws" designed to ensure that if Roe falls (which it currently does), the abortion ban will be immediately enforced in that state. About half of the states in the U.S. have indicated that they intend to ban abortion in the wake of this ruling.

"We hold that Roe and Casey must be abrogated," wrote Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. The Constitution makes no mention of abortion, and such a right is not implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, on which Roe and Casey advocates now rely most heavily. The clause has been held to guarantee rights not mentioned in the Constitution, but such rights must be "deeply rooted in the history and traditions of this country" and "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty."

The full text of the decision can be read here.