I heard one explanation that Roberts agreed to uphold the Mississippi law, but opposed overturning Roe. Some are calling it a 6-3 decision and others a 5-4.
Guess the various media will get the stories straight eventually.
Yeah, I just finished reading Roberts Concurring in Judgement opinion.
In it he said:
In urging our review, Mississippi stated that its case was “an ideal vehicle” to “reconsider the bright-line viability rule,” and that a judgment in its favor would “not require the Court to overturn” Roe v. Wade, and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey. Today, the Court nonetheless rules for Mississippi by doing just that. I would take a more measured course. I agree with the Court that the viability line established by Roe and Casey should be discarded under a straightforward stare decisis analysis. That line never made any sense. Our abortion precedents describe the right at issue as a woman’s right to choose to terminate her pregnancy. That right should therefore extend far enough to ensure a reasonable opportunity to choose, but need not extend any further—certainly not all the way to viability. Mississippi’s law allows a woman three months to obtain an abortion, well beyond the point at which it is considered “late” to discover a pregnancy. See A. Ayoola, Late Recognition of Unintended Pregnancies, 32 Pub. Health Nursing 462 (2015) (pregnancy is discoverable and ordinarily discovered by six weeks of gestation). I see no sound basis for questioning the adequacy of that opportunity. But that is all I would say, out of adherence to a simple yet fundamental principle of judicial restraint: If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, then it is necessary not to decide more. Perhaps we are not always perfect in following that command, and certainly there are cases that warrant an exception. But this is not one of them. Surely we should adhere closely to principles of judicial restraint here, where the broader path the Court chooses entails repudiating a constitutional right we have not only previously recognized, but also expressly reaffirmed applying the doctrine of stare decisis. The Court’s opinion is thoughtful and thorough, but those virtues cannot compensate for the fact that its dramatic and consequential ruling is unnecessary to decide the case before us.Roberts agrees with the ruling, but disagrees about overturning Roe v. Wade outright.
That's correct. It was 6-3 on the judgement of upholding the specific Mississippi law at issue, but 5-4 to overturn Roe. It should be pointed out that Roberts did not say that Roe was correctly decided. His position was that the court did not have to reach the issue of whether or not Roe was correctly decided, and so should have left that issue for another day.
I personally don't believe his position makes a lot of sense. His argument was that as long as a woman is given "a reasonable period of time" to choose an abortion, the core of Roe and Casey was not impacted. He thought that reasonable period of time could come before fetal viability, which is why he would have upheld the Mississippi law.
The problem is that his standard of giving the woman a reasonable period of time to consider an abortion is something he simply made up, and is no more constitutionally grounded than is the "viability" standard.