Effective July 31, 2018, Supreme Court Justice Robert Kennedy will retire. This announcement sparked concerns in American left-wing media that the Supreme Court will be left with a right-wing skew that might jeopardize important left-wing jurisprudence. Most notably, there are concerns that Roe v. Wade, the decision which forbade abortion restrictions, will be overturned.

Roe established the individual right to abortion in 1973 during the first 2 trimesters of a pregnancy (approximately 2 weeks). Roe was later altered in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, reducing the individual's right to abortion to when it is not viable to safely deliver the fetus, which is commonly around 24 weeks of pregnancy, though the earliest patient to survive an early-term birth was born at 21 weeks and 5 days. Casey also found that states may not pass laws placing an undue burden for "the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus"