The Supreme Court is hearing arguments Wednesday on Mississippi’s law explicitly attempting to get Roe v. Wade overturned, and, as expected, the red flags are flying.

The Mississippi law bans abortion after 15 weeks gestation, well before the standard of fetal viability that the court has long held. The court’s six right-wing justices have the option to either do away with Roe’s protection of reproductive freedom altogether or to do away with the viability standard, putting into place a newly slippery slope that allows the 15-week Mississippi ban but not, say, the six-week ban currently in Texas law. 

Chief Justice John Roberts hinted at that outcome in his questions Wednesday, saying, “Viability, it seems to me, doesn’t have anything to do with choice. If it really is an issue about choice, why is 15 weeks not enough time?”

But “permitting Mississippi’s 15-week ban to take effect is not a compromise. It would be undoing 48 years of precedent permitting the constitutional right to an abortion up to the point of viability. It would be a reversal of the twin towers of abortion law: Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey,” Imani Gandy wrote at Rewire News in November.

All three liberal justices emphasized how monumental it would be for the court to overturn Roe v. Wade, a precedent that has been repeatedly upheld over nearly 50 years. Justice Elena Kagan noted that one reason for stare decisis—following precedent in most cases—is “to prevent people from thinking that this court is a political institution that will go back and forth” as its membership changes or depending on who “yells the loudest.”

“To reexamine a watershed” of Roe’s importance, Justice Stephen Breyer said, “would subvert the court’s legitimacy.”

In her questions, Justice Sonia Sotomayor took direct aim at Mississippi’s admission that the plan was to get this law through the Supreme Court now that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell have packed it with far-right justices, highlighting the damage to the court’s reputation that would follow:

Related to the question of how the Trump justices change the equation—and are okay with having the world know that they changed the equation on partisan grounds—legal analyst Elie Mystal noted that he “found it very interesting (not in a good way) that Gorsuch had no questions, given that Mississippi EXPLICITLY SAID that it passed its abortion ban BECAUSE Gorsuch and Kavanaugh got on the court.”

Sotomayor also pressed Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart on what other court precedents, including marriage equality and the right to birth control, could be endangered by the court overturning Roe on such nakedly political grounds. The precedents on those issues, she said, are “all wrong, according to your theater.” Which, yes. Abortion is just the beginning of the rights the far-right legal movement is trying to destroy. Rewire’s Jessica Mason Pieklo suggested that, in his questions, Justice Clarence Thomas was going beyond the question of Roe’s fate to an implied fetal personhood argument, which would have much further-reaching implications for women’s lives and rights.

Sotomayor also asked an important question—and one too often left out of the court’s consideration of how women’s bodies will be regulated. “When does the life of a woman—and risk to her health—enter the analysis?” She continued, “Poor women who elect abortions before viability—they are put at a tremendously greater risk—14 times greater to give birth to a child full-term than to have a previability abortion.”

Those facts are critical. But most of all, “When does the life of a woman enter the analysis?” It’s not a question Mississippi Republicans or the Supreme Court’s right-wing justices want to consider.

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