Conservative Justice John Roberts is expected to join liberals on the Supreme Court bench in voting against overturning landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade.
The Supreme Court’s Chief Justice is against completely overturning Roe v. Wade and would therefore likely dissent from Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion and vote with the court’s three liberal justices, sources told CNN.
Despite voting against an entire overturn, Roberts is willing, according to the Tuesday report, to uphold the Mississippi law that would ban abortion at the 15-week mark of pregnancy.
The laws created in the aftermath of the Roe v. Wade decision made it so the government cannot interfere with a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy before the point when a baby can live outside its mother’s womb, which is around 23 weeks into a pregnancy.
The Supreme Court currently sits at a 6-3 conservative majority, but Roberts has more recently and consistently voted with members of the court that were nominated by Democratic presidents.
If he goes forward with dissenting from his conservative colleagues, the Justices that would make up the majority overturning Roe are Alito as well as Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.