Virginia's pro-life Attorney General tells Supreme Court 'Roe and Casey were wrongly decided'

Virginia's Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) less than a week after taking office sent a letter to the Supreme Court urging them to reverse the 'wrongly decided' Roe v. Wade. 

Under Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring, Virginia joined 22 other states in September that filed a brief in support of abortion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, a pending Supreme Court case.

"Following the change in Administration" Solicitor General Andrew Ferguson, a Miyares appointee, wrote that "the Attorney General has reconsidered Virginia’s position in this case."

"Virginia now urges this Court to reverse the Fifth Circuit. First, Roe and Casey were wrongly decided," Ferguson wrote on Friday. 

The Fifth Circuit Court affirmed ruled that the Mississippi Gestational Age Act, which prohibits abortion after the fetus reaches 15 weeks of gestation, violated a woman's Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. The Court determined in Roe v. Wade that states may not regulate abortion during the first trimester under the Due Process Clause's "right to privacy." Casey v. Planned Parenthood reaffirmed Roe and prohibited states from imposing an "undue burden" on women attempting to obtain an abortion. 

Dobbs challenges the 1973 landmark abortion case.

"It is Virginia’s position that the Court’s decisions in Roe and Casey were wrongly decided. Unmoored from the Constitution’s text, the Court’s abortion jurisprudence has proven unworkable, and the Court’s effort to save it has distorted other areas of the law," Ferguson wrote. "This Court should restore judicial neutrality to the abortion debate by permitting the people of the several States to resolve these questions for themselves."

The Supreme Court last week denied another challenge to a Texas abortion law that allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and people who assist in terminating pregnancies.