|  Photograph by Chip Somodevilla / Getty The right to an abortion, a right Americans have known for nearly half a century, could be on the verge of vanishing. In a new piece examining the Supreme Court oral arguments in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, involving a Mississippi ban on most abortions after fifteen weeks, Amy Davidson Sorkin writes that lawyers and Justices on both sides “appeared to be past pretending that the case is about anything less.” What began as a gradual chipping away of rights in some states has evolved into a potential reversal of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, two cases “that enshrined reproductive rights and access to abortion.” The three liberal Justices spoke passionately on Tuesday, with Elena Kagan calling access to abortion “part of the fabric of women’s existence in this country.” But their zeal was overshadowed by the strength in numbers of the six conservative Justices, including Amy Coney Barrett, who, in her questioning, offered what Davidson Sorkin calls a “glimpse of an alternative America.” In a country where polls show that the majority of adults believe abortion should be legal in most cases, Sonia Sotomayor raised the question of whether the Court will survive “the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts.” Then there is also the question, as Davidson Sorkin writes, of “whether certain Republicans, whose party has pushed opposition to reproductive rights as a usefully divisive issue, will come to regret what they have wrought.” —Jessie Li, newsletter editor Read “The Supreme Court Looks Ready to Overturn Roe v. Wade.” | 
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