From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. This is The Daily.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the biggest abortion case to come before it in the last 30 years.

I spoke with my colleague, Adam Liptak, about how far the court's new conservative majority may go in deciding the future of abortion in America.

It's Thursday, December 2.

So, Adam, when we had you on the show at the start of the term back in October, you said this would be the most important Supreme Court term in decades.

And a big reason for that is the case that the court heard yesterday. So, tell us about this case.

This case is a true blockbuster. It's a frontal challenge to Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

And it asks the court to overrule Roe and precedence following it. Undo that very important precedent and allow states to ban abortions whenever they want to.

Okay, this sounds like the big abortion case. I mean, the one that people have been thinking about. How exactly does it challenge Roe?

This is a case about a Mississippi law. Mississippi passed a law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Roe says you can't ban abortions before the fetus can survive outside the womb. And that these days is around 23 weeks. So, this moves the line back about two months.

And that's plainly unconstitutional under Roe. So, for Mississippi to win this case, and for its 15 week law to survive, the court would have to do real damage to the holding in Roe.

So, this actually takes direct aim at the heart of Roe.

Right. Almost everyone would agree that the key holding in Roe v Wade was the states cannot ban abortions before fetal viability.

So, Adam, what were your expectations going into these oral arguments?

Why didn't the court took the case simply to strike down the Mississippi law? All kinds of red states passed laws like this all the time, and they routinely struck down by lower courts as this one was because it's at odds with Roe v Wade.

So, I think they took the case to do something. And they took it after a series of new justices had reached the court.

Right.

Donald Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court, and he said of all of them that he wanted them and expected them to overrule Roe v Wade.

So, you have a new court, and you have them doing something quite unusual. And that led me to think they were prepared to uphold the Mississippi law.

And the question was whether they do that or even more than that.

And we will hear an argument this morning in case 1913-92, Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization.

...