Listing to the arguments it sounded like a 6-3 in favor of Mississippi. Roberts seemed to want to find a more narrow ruling than the other Justices. I see him assigning the opinion to himself or to a justice he has convinced to write a narrower opinion. He might fail to keep a majority behind his opinion and I could see him writing a sole concurrence in a 5-1-3 case or this case turning into a messy plurality opinion. Hard to see a majority invalidating Mississippi's law
The swing vote on Roe is probably Gorsuch.
I think there's something there to what he said. Obviously, no one here, myself included, thinks the Mississippi law is going to be struck down. This is all going to come down to whether
Roe and
Casey over outright overruled or just massively gutted (which is effectively the same as overruling). Gorsuch didn't really tip his hand, but his exchange with the pro-
Roe/
Casey side seemed to focus on the undue burden standard. He is a bit on an enigma to me, to be honest. I could see him going a number of ways on this, but I would agree that the most likely is that he votes to overrule
Roe and
Casey.
As has been noted, Roberts appears to want to uphold the law without overruling
Roe/
Casey outright. He seems willing to uphold the basic liberty of a right to an abortion through his views on stare decisis. I think the most likely way to get there is the elimination of the viability standard, but leave something like the undue burden standard. I'm not sure what the cut-off would be, but it would certainly have to preclude 6-week bans and anything shorter. The ultimate question as to whether this will be an overruling (with Roberts left out of the controlling opinion) or something closer to that potential Roberts view is whether he can get another Justice on board. I think the only options are ether Gorsuch or Barrett. Considering her brief tenure on the Court, she's probably more of an enigma than even Gorsuch.
