The state of Mississippi has just filed its merits brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the big abortion case to be decided by the Supreme Court next term. At issue in the case is Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, enacted in 2018, which allows abortions after 15 weeks of gestational age only in medical emergencies or in instances of severe fetal abnormality.

Calling Roe v. Wade “egregiously wrong,” Mississippi’s attorney general urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to do away with the constitutional right to abortion and to sustain a state law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The court will hear arguments in the case in the fall, giving its newly expanded conservative majority a chance to confront what may be the most divisive issue in American law: whether the Constitution protects the right to end pregnancies.

The state of Mississippi on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court in a major case set to be argued in its next term to overturn the landmark 1973 ruling that recognized that women have a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. 

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, a Republican, said in papers filed with the court that the Roe v. Wade ruling and a subsequent 1992 decision that affirmed it were both “egregiously wrong” and that state legislatures should have more leeway to restrict abortion. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority.