The US Supreme Court announced Monday that it will hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on Wednesday December 1. In the wake of Texas’ six-week abortion ban, Dobbs has become a highly anticipated ruling that could affirm or eliminate the right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade in 1973.

In 2018, Jackson Women’s Health Org. challenged the Gestational Age Act, banning abortion after 15 weeks. The trial court granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs, and Thomas Dobbs, the State Health Officer for the Mississippi Department of Health, appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The appeals court found the act unconstitutional. Dobbs filed a petition for a writ of certiorari on June 15, 2020. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, but oral arguments faced several delays.

In its brief, Jackson Women’s Health Org. cites landmark case Planned Parenthood v. Casey as evidence that “nearly fifty years of precedent [holds] that it is unconstitutional to ban abortion before viability.”

Dobbs argues that the Mississippi law “protects women’s health, the dignity of unborn children, and the integrity of the medical profession and society” and therefore should not be analyzed under the undue burden test established in Casey. The test finds a law unconstitutional when it imposes an undue burden on a woman seeking an abortion. Dobbs claims that the court established a new test in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt in 2016. There, the court weighed a burden imposed by an abortion restriction “against the law’s benefits.”

Dobbs also questions the wisdom of using the viability of the fetus to measure abortion legality, arguing that a 24-week-old fetus would not have been viable in the 1970s but would be today. Jackson Women’s Health Org. holds that the viability line is “workable” and has remained the same since 1992.

More than 70 amicus briefs have been filed in the case by organizations and individuals. Senators Josh Hawley, Mike Lee and Ted Cruz, and myriad religious organizations wrote in support of a recognized right to life. Groups like the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center and the Freedom From Religion Foundation have filed briefs in support of Jackson Women’s Health Org.