Roe v. Wade

Over 200 Members of Congress Ask Supreme Court to ‘Reconsider' Roe v. Wade

The lawmakers — 38 senators and 168 House members — filed an amicus brief urging the court to "reconsider" the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision

This file photo taken June 20, 2019, shows the Supreme Court under stormy skies in Washington.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Over 200 members of Congress, most of them Republican men, asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to consider overturning two landmark abortion rights cases ahead of oral arguments in a Louisiana abortion case scheduled for March, NBC News reports.

The lawmakers — 38 senators and 168 House members — filed an amicus brief urging the court to "reconsider" the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortions across the nation, as well as the court's 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld Roe v. Wade and barred states from placing an "undue burden" on access to abortions. Two Democrats, Reps. Daniel Lipinski of Illinois and Collin Peterson of Minnesota, joined the brief.

At issue is Louisiana's Unsafe Abortion Protection Act, which was passed in 2014 and requires any doctor offering abortion services to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. The law is not currently in effect.

A federal district judge blocked the law in 2017. But in 2018, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld it, arguing that the law would not impose an "undue burden," which has been the high court's key legal test for challenges to abortion restrictions. The Supreme Court reimposed the stay in February to weigh its constitutionality, and it said Tuesday that it would hear the case on March 4.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com

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