The Nine Wise Men, including six Conservatives, will look at a law passed in 2018 by the state of Mississippi from 10 a.m. local time on Wednesday, Dec. 1, which prohibits abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy.
The US Supreme Court is expected to render its decision next spring.
The law, measured against other legislation adopted in recent years, nonetheless violates the legal framework set by the Supreme Court.
By agreeing to examine it, the High Court therefore sent the signal that it was ready to review its copy.
This goes back to 1973: in its emblematic Roe v.
Wade, the Court ruled that the Constitution guarantees a right of women to have an abortion and that states cannot deprive them of it.
In 1992, she clarified that it was valid as long as the fetus was not "viable", ie around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Acknowledging this jurisprudence, federal courts blocked Mississippi law before it came into effect.
The leaders of this rural and religious state then turned to the Supreme Court.
When it accepted their appeal, when there was no obligation to do so, the Court explained that it was ready to question the limit of "viability".
But Mississippi is now asking him to go further and simply cancel his 1973 shutdown.
"We are aware of the impact of our request," State Attorney General Lynn Fitch said in an editorial to the Washington Post.
"But, 49 years ago, the Court favored political intuition over sound legal reasoning to reach a constitutionally unfounded conclusion and it is time to correct that error."
Roe v.
Wade "forgotten in history"
All levels of the Republican Party supported her, along with the Catholic Church and numerous anti-abortion groups, some of which spent millions of dollars on advertising campaigns ahead of the hearing.
All these actors believe that their hour has come, after half a century of judicial and political struggle.
"We are about to enter a new era, where the Supreme Court will return the Roe v. Wade decision to the oblivion of history, from which it should never have emerged," said the former vice -President Mike Pence, an ultra-conservative Christian, on the eve of the hearing.
Opponents of abortion are galvanized by the arrival at the Supreme Court of three judges appointed by former President Donald Trump who have strengthened his conservative majority.
Their influence was already felt on September 1, when the American temple of law refused, for procedural reasons, to block the entry into force of a law in Texas which prohibits abortion as early as six weeks of pregnancy. .
He has since reopened the case and expressed his skepticism about the architecture of the text, but his final decision is long overdue and many Texans remain forced to leave their state to have an abortion.
02:29
36 million women deprived of access to terminations of pregnancy?
On the other hand, defenders of the right of women to have abortions, "as worried as ever", are closing ranks.
Medical, feminist or civil rights associations have written to the Court asking it to invalidate the Mississippi law, as have hundreds of elected Democrats or 500 high-level athletes, including footballer Megan Rapinoe.
All assure that altering, if only a little, the current jurisprudence, will bring down the whole edifice.
If the viability criterion is dropped, "States will be able to ban abortions at any stage of pregnancy," notes Julie Rikelman, who will plead before the nine wise men on behalf of the only clinic practicing abortions in Mississippi.
According to the powerful family planning organization, Planned Parenthood, 28 states are likely to do so, and 36 million women of childbearing age are denied access to terminations of pregnancy.
Even without saying it, validating Mississippi's law "would be like overturning Roe," says Julie Rikelman.
With AFP
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