The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Wednesday in the most significant abortion case it has considered since it established the constitutional right to the procedure in the 1973 decision Roe v. Wade.

The case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, centers on a Mississippi law that bans nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy—a direct challenge to the central holding of Roe v. Wade. The outcome of the case could redefine the right to abortion in the United States and have profound implications not just for reproductive rights, but for nearly every sector of American society, from health care and criminal justice to workforce participation and the economy.
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The stakes are especially high because the Supreme Court has grown more conservative in recent years. When Mississippi officials asked the high court to take the case in 2020, conservative justices outnumbered liberals 5-4. But after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and Trump-nominee Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed, the Court lurched further right. It now has a 6-3 conservative majority.

Starting last year, the justices spent months deliberating over whether to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. When they announced in May that they would consider it, reproductive rights groups expressed shock. The decision to consider the case at all signaled that the majority was willing to revisit the fundamental premise of Roe v. Wade, which asserts that states cannot restrict abortion before fetal viability, typically around 24 weeks into pregnancy.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will consider the question of whether all bans on abortion before viability are unconstitutional. Mississippi has also asked the Court directly to overturn Roe, as well as Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 decision that reaffirmed abortion rights. In the state’s brief, filed over the summer, Mississippi’s Republican attorney general, Lynn Fitch, argued that both precedents are “unprincipled decisions” without basis in the Constitution and that states should be allowed to prohibit abortion if the laws support legitimate government interests.

Read More: Inside Mississippi’s Last Abortion Clinic—And the Biggest Fight for Abortion Rights in a Generation

Legal experts largely agree that the court will more likely avoid explicitly overturning Roe, and will instead issue a decision that allows far more restrictions on abortion while technically leaving the nearly 50-year-old decision in place. But abortion rights advocates say that any decision that allows the Mississippi law to stand will effectively gut the right to abortion by opening up a pathway for states to more severely limit the procedure.

Many conservative states have passed increasingly restrictive laws regulating abortion in recent years. In November, the Court heard another set of high-profile abortion cases. In that hearing, the justices considered a Texas statute, which went into effect in September, that bans almost all abortions after about six weeks and deputizes private citizens to enforce the limit. While the Texas law’s fate is still uncertain, lawmakers in at least half a dozen other states are already drafting legislation that emulates it or have said they want to do so. If the Mississippi law also is upheld, more Republican-led states would likely follow its lead and enact similar measures in the future.

The law before the Court

The Mississippi law in question, which prohibits abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, was passed by the state’s Republican-majority legislature in 2018. The law makes exceptions only in cases when the fetus has a severe abnormality that is “incompatible with life” or when the pregnancy threatens the woman’s life or a “major bodily function.” Doctors who violate the ban would have their medical licenses suspended or revoked. When Mississippi’s then-Governor Phil Bryant signed the law in March of that year, he said the state was “saving more of the unborn than any state in America.”

The state’s only abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, immediately filed suit to block the law, arguing it was unconstitutional. A federal district court judge agreed and struck down the law. A three-judge panel of the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals then upheld that ruling. When Mississippi appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, Jackson Women’s Health Organization and its lawyers expected the justices to reject the case because it so directly challenged precedent. Instead, they found themselves preparing to fight the law again.

Read more: The Fate of Roe v. Wade May Rest on This Woman’s Shoulders

Mississippi is arguing that Roe should be overturned because the viability standard it established is arbitrary and does not appropriately take into account a state’s interest in regulating abortion. It also says that times have changed since 1973, necessitating a review of Supreme Court precedent.

“Today, adoption is accessible and on a wide scale women attain both professional success and a rich family life, contraceptives are more available and effective, and scientific advances show that an unborn child has taken on the human form and features months before viability. States should be able to act on those developments,” the office of the state’s attorney general said in its brief before the Court.

If the Court does not overrule Roe, state officials argue the justices could instead significantly weaken it by either allowing bans before fetal viability or by ruling that the 15-week law does not put a significant burden on people in Mississippi.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization provides abortions up to 16 weeks, so the state has argued its law “reduces by only one week the time in which abortions are available in Mississippi.” But the state legally allows abortions up to 20 weeks right now, and Mississippi officials have repeatedly attempted to challenge the right to all abortions, not just those after 15 weeks. In 2019, Mississippi passed a six-week abortion ban, which was blocked by the courts, and in June, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, a Republican, told CNN that he sees the 15-week ban as a “vehicle” for the Supreme Court to revisit Roe.

Abortion rights supporters argue that the Mississippi law is clearly unconstitutional and that Mississippi has not made a convincing case for why the Supreme Court should deviate from its precedent.

“The State’s suggestion that gains in women’s status somehow support taking away their right to make basic decisions about their lives and their bodies is nonsensical,” lawyers for Jackson Women’s Health Organization wrote in their brief before the Court. “Even if the claim that the United States had achieved full gender equality were true (it is not), those gains were made while the Court has steadfastly reaffirmed the right to abortion.”

The clinic’s lawyers also say that viability remains a useful standard for abortion laws. “Since the court has looked at these issues before, looked at these same arguments and rejected them, nothing has changed,” Julie Rikelman, director of litigation at the Center for Reproductive Rights, who will argue the case on behalf of the Mississippi clinic, told reporters recently. “Nothing has changed in terms of the facts. Nothing has changed in terms of the law. So there is just no basis for the Court to reach a different outcome today than it has in the past on this right.”

What the justices could do

While it’s impossible to know how the Supreme Court will decide, legal scholars say there are a few most likely paths.

The Court may decide that abortion bans before fetal viability are constitutional. That decision would drastically change the way states interpret what laws they are allowed to pass. If this happens, dozens of other abortion laws that have been blocked or challenged in lower courts could suddenly be reconsidered.

The Court may also decide to revisit Casey, the 1992 decision that said states could pass restrictions as long as they did not pose an “undue burden” to people seeking them. If the justices rule that Mississippi’s 15-week law does not pose an “undue burden” on patients, that would also expand what laws the state and others like it seek to implement under that new standard.

The Court may also choose to reinterpret the standard for abortion laws in another way, then send the Mississippi case back to lower courts to consider the law under whatever new standard has been established.

Of course, the Court could choose to overturn Roe directly. But legal scholars say that’s perhaps less likely due to concerns that such a decision may be interpreted as overtly political. Public opinion of the Supreme Court hit a record low this fall, and four of the nine justices have expressed concerns in recent months about being viewed as overly partisan. The American Bar Association filed a brief addressing this topic, telling the Court that reversing such long-held precedents “would create a wave of political and social turmoil, and damage the Court as an institution.” Whatever they decide, the justices may also avoid establishing any specific new standard, legal experts say, because the Court would then have to overrule that if it does completely overturn Roe in the future.

The justices are expected to decide the case by the end of the current term in June.

Immense stakes for the country and the courts

Both abortion rights advocates and abortion opponents are gearing up for big changes after the Supreme Court rules.

Mississippi says in its brief that it hopes Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will settle the abortion debate in the U.S. and allow individual states to restrict abortion however their lawmakers would like. “The national fever on abortion can break only when this Court returns abortion policy to the States,” Mississippi’s brief says.

Abortion rights advocates argue that such a ruling would create chaos both for people seeking abortions and for the courts. A decision explicitly overturning Roe would have immediate consequences. Twelve states, including Mississippi, have what are known as “trigger” laws designed to ban all or most abortions shortly after the Supreme Court overturns Roe. Nine other states have previously passed laws that stringently restrict abortion, which they could move quickly to implement, and five more states are likely to try banning abortion if allowed to do so, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research center that supports abortion rights. All told, about half of the states are expected to quickly criminalize abortion.

Read More: The Supreme Court Will Consider the Texas Abortion Law. Their Decision Could Change the Court—and the Country

This would create an even more stark patchwork of access across the country than already exists, making abortions completely inaccessible across much of the South and Midwest. Many people would need to cross state lines and travel hundreds of miles to reach the nearest clinic. Abortion rights advocates, researchers, legal scholars and economists have also argued in amicus briefs that this would have a powerful impact on women’s equality by hurting their health, educational and career opportunities, as well as the financial security of individuals and their families.

All of these consequences would disproportionately impact people who are already vulnerable, including low-income women, people of color, LGBT people and those who live in rural areas. Those who work low-wage jobs and have limited access to paid time off face extra challenges navigating the logistical and financial hurdles of accessing abortions. Black women also have much higher rates of maternal mortality than white women, and experts have warned that abortion restrictions could lead to more maternal deaths. Advocates also fear that Black people would face stiffer consequences if abortion were criminalized, given the racism embedded in many parts of the U.S. justice system.

In Mississippi, many of the patients at Jackson Women’s Health Organization are young, low-income Black women who have children. The state already significantly limits abortion in many ways, which the clinic staff say makes it difficult for their patients to afford their services. Mississippi prohibits abortion after 20 weeks, bars telemedicine for abortion, mandates in-person counseling and then a 24-hour waiting period, requires parental consent for minors, does not allow public health insurance to cover abortion in most cases, and requires that doctors who perform abortions be board-certified obstetrician-gynecologists.

The clinic has a fund to help some patients afford abortions, and many get help from other abortion funds too. If the Supreme Court allows states to restrict abortion further, barriers will increase, but abortion providers and advocates note that people will not stop seeking abortions.

“People need to understand that if you’re already suffering, taking something away does not make the suffering go away. It increases the suffering,” Shannon Brewer, the director of Jackson Women’s Health Organization, told reporters earlier in November. “And that’s what’s gonna happen here.”

During their local mayoral race in early November, town residents in Hialeah, Florida, population 230,000, heard a familiar voice in a campaign ad for the city’s election. “Steve Bovo,” boomed former President Donald Trump’s voice, in an ad spliced with video of Trump name checking the Republican candidate during a rally in 2020. Boosting Bovo’s campaign to run the town next door to the Trump National Doral Miami resort, the former President’s endorsement told voters that “as Mayor, Bovo will fight for the values that are now under attack by the Radical Left.” With Trump’s seal of approval, Bovo won the municipal election with 59% of the vote.

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Bovo’s not the only hyper-local candidate to win an endorsement from the 45th President. Over the last year, Trump has endorsed 57 officials in state, local and congressional races across the country, according to a tally kept by Ballotpedia. He endorsed the winning candidate for Staten Island borough president. He’s already backed candidates running in 2022 for land commissioner in Texas, agricultural commissioner in Florida, secretary of state in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, a host of state attorneys general and lieutenant governor hopefuls, as well as 17 candidates for House races, 14 Senate races and eight state governor’s races.

An endorsement from a former President is coveted political capital, and it is unusual for a former Commander-in-Chief to extend his influence to such low-level political races. So what is Trump up to? It’s partly personal, political observers say. Trump has always been open about supporting those who praise him and attacking those who criticize him. Since leaving office, he has intervened in low-level races where he has a personal history. “He’s got a long memory and is one of the most vengeful people we’ve ever come across,” says Larry Sabato, a prominent political analyst and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

But Trump appears to have tactical reasons for intervening at the local level, too. His failed attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election suggest to Sabato and others that his local endorsements have a political motivation, especially when they are for positions that oversee vote counting and certification of election results in swing states.

Endorsing candidates for secretary of state, for example, may be a sign that Trump learned from his inability to overturn the election in 2020 and is positioning himself to be able to change the outcome if he or an ally loses the presidential race in 2024. (Trump has not yet announced whether he plans to run.) “He wasn’t able to control the process in the way that he had expected after the 2020 election. He wants to make sure it doesn’t happen again in 2024,” Sabato says. “He’s trying to prepare the way either for himself or for his chosen successor on the Republican side.” In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Trump unsuccessfully pressured members of Congress and state-level secretaries of state to alter vote totals or not certify results for Joe Biden. “We all know now Election Day is just the beginning of the process,” Sabato continues. “The old tradition of a peaceful transition of power is out the window, thanks to Donald Trump and his allies.”

The office for former President Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s endorsements have extended even lower into city governments than the secretaries of state or mayors’ offices. Vito Fossella had served multiple terms as a state representative in Albany until a DUI arrest in 2008 revealed he had a second family living in Virginia, and the revelation temporarily tanked his political career. But Trump boosted Fosella’s comeback in the race for Staten Island Borough President this year with an endorsement that proclaimed “New York City is now a filthy and dangerous place” and Fossella is “the only true Conservative Republican in the race who will stand up to the Radical Liberal Mob.” Fossella won the race. He said he got a call from Trump after his come-from-behind win.

Trump has focused some of his recent endorsements on 2022 elections Texas—a state he won in 2020 by more than five points. He endorsed Dawn Buckingham, who is running for Texas land commissioner. She was an early supporter of Trump’s in 2015 and currently serves in the Texas state senate. The state’s current land commissioner is George P. Bush, the son of Trump’s 2016 Presidential primary rival Jeb Bush. The younger Bush broke with his family’s criticism of Trump earlier this year to praise Trump in what was widely seen as a bid to get Trump’s endorsement for Texas attorney general. Also joining the attorney general race is another Trump supporter, Congressman Louie Gohmert, who met with planners of the Jan. 6 rally and is a member of the House Anglo Saxon Political Traditions Caucus. Trump decided to endorse the incumbent Ken Paxton for reelection instead, and has scheduled a fundraiser for Paxton at Mar-a-Lago in December.

Some of Trump’s early endorsements are for candidates in states that contributed to his election loss in 2020. In Michigan, he’s endorsed candidates for attorney general and secretary of state, as well as five state representatives. In Georgia, he’s backed candidates for secretary of state and lieutenant governor. He’s endorsed a candidate for secretary of state in Arizona, where allies dragged out an election audit that ultimately confirmed Biden’s win. Those states will likely be closely contested in 2024 as well, and Trump seems to be trying to position allies in key roles.

Not all of Trump’s picks so far have been successful. Trump’s choice in the Republican primary for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat, Sean Parnell, dropped out of the race on Nov. 22 after losing custody of his three children amid abuse allegations in contested divorce proceedings. Trump’s endorsement can help, but “you’ve still got to nominate good candidates,” says Whit Ayers, a Republican pollster and political consultant.

Trump’s endorsements are most effective in Republican primaries in states and districts that went for Trump in 2020, says Ayers. In 2018, then-President Trump’s endorsement of Ron DeSantis in the Republican primary for Florida governor swung the race by more than 20 points in DeSantis’ favor, Ayers says. But a Trump endorsement “doesn’t appear to be anywhere near that potent today in the wake of the post-election allegations and Jan. 6,” he says. In toss-up states, a Trump endorsement could even be a “minus,” according to Ayers, and help motivate Democratic voters. Ayers argues that Trump’s false allegations of election fraud in Georgia depressed Republican turnout during the Senate runoff late last year, allowing Democrats to win those two Senate seats. When Trump endorsed Maryland state delegate Daniel Cox as a primary challenger to Maryland’s incumbent Republican Governor Larry Hogan, Hogan wrote on Twitter, “Personally, I’d prefer endorsements from people who didn’t lose Maryland by 33 points.”

As Trump tries to sway the outcome in local races from New York to Arizona, the next year will test just how influential the former President remains.

The seven sailors point their rifles skyward and fire three times in unison, shattering the silence at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. The military salute signifies the end of an 80-year-old mystery that traces back to Dec. 7, 1941, the beginning of America’s involvement in World War II.

Navy sailors Harold and William Trapp were presumed killed when their battleship U.S.S. Oklahoma was hit by Japanese torpedoes and capsized in Pearl Harbor. The Trapp family waited for weeks, months, then years as the military worked to find the brothers’ remains and send them home. But there were few intact bodies left in the water that day, and as time went on, the remains aboard the Oklahoma mixed together.
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The U.S. Navy declared the brothers dead despite never identifying them, a fate shared by most of the 429 sailors and Marines killed aboard the ship. Bound by the forensic limitations of the era, the military collected their remains and buried them in 46 common graves in the Honolulu cemetery under granite headstones that read: UNKNOWN.

Now, eight decades later, the Trapp brothers and their shipmates are being laid to rest in graves bearing their own names. Over the past six years, an obscure unit inside the Pentagon called the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) has identified 361 men killed aboard the Oklahoma. One by one, the graves have been exhumed, the remains analyzed and identified with advances in DNA technology and science. The military hopes the Oklahoma project, completed this year, could serve as a model for identifying remains of other soldiers, killed in other wars. Based on its success, the DPAA believes there could soon be a day without any “unknown” military graves.

On June 15, a bright, clear day at the cemetery known as the Punchbowl, the Trapp brothers are buried with full military honors in a ceremony attended by family members never given the chance to meet Harold and William. “I don’t think people understand what it means to have somebody who has been unidentified,” says Carol Sowar, the brothers’ niece. “Unless you go through it personally, you just have no idea what it means to have this closure.”

Harold was born in December 1916 on the northside of Chicago. William came 13 months later. They, along with their kid sister and Sowar’s mother, Irene, were raised 65 miles east in the rural town of La Porte, Ind., after their parents sought a slower pace of life for their family. Harold was serious and thoughtful, with aspirations of becoming an engineer. William, meanwhile, was more happy-go-lucky and free-spirited.

The brothers were inseparable. Nearly every family photo shows them together—Harold, a head-taller than William—and if one of them isn’t in the picture, it’s usually because he’s the one taking it. The brothers took odd jobs together, picking fruit, caddying at the local golf club or trapping muskrats and selling the fur. So, on May 4, 1939, when William chose to enlist in the Navy, Harold joined him.

It wasn’t uncommon at the time for family members who enlisted together to serve in the same unit or on the same ship. The brothers each went through training in their respective specialties. William, an electrician’s mate, reported for duty aboard the Oklahoma in August 1939 and Harold, a fire controlman, followed eight months later. By that time, the ship was beginning to conduct exercises off Hawaii. The brothers sent photos back home showing their delight with their new island life: wearing leis around their necks, balancing pineapples in the palms of their hands or standing triumphant atop a windswept mountain.

On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Harold, 24, was on deck of the Oklahoma while William, 23, was working below, according to their family. The ship was moored in the shallows of Pearl Harbor’s “Battleship Row,” and unbeknownst to the brothers, formations of Japanese dive bombers, torpedo planes and fighters were already headed their way.

A little before 8 a.m., the first torpedo exploded into the side of the ship. Plumes of water climbed into the air as more torpedoes tore into the ship’s steel hull. The Oklahoma’s crew manned battle stations and tried to fight back, but it had been hit eight times within the first ten minutes. The ship listed and capsized when the ninth—and final—torpedo struck.

Sailors jumped into the scalding, oil-slick water to avoid strafing runs. Some climbed across mooring lines to reach the nearby U.S.S. Maryland. When the bombs stopped finally dropping, the Japanese damaged or sank 21 ships. A total of 2,403 Americans died, 429 of which had been aboard the Oklahoma and 1,177 on the U.S.S. Arizona, the wreckage of which still lies in Pearl Harbor to this day.

Typically, the Navy would not have attempted to recover the victims. The remains aboard the sunken Arizona, for instance, stayed with the ship. “That becomes their final resting place. It’s kind of like being buried at sea,” says Johnie Webb, director of outreach at DPAA. But because much of the Oklahoma was intact and there were sailors trapped alive inside, Webb explains, the Navy believed it might be able to salvage the ship and save the survivors.

Indeed, rescuers drilled holes and saved 32 men. Later, Navy personnel worked to recover the fallen crew from December 1941 to June 1944. But as the remains came in, laboratory staff was only able to identify 35 men. The rest were ultimately buried in mass graves at the Punchbowl. The Trapps were one of at least eight sets of brothers killed aboard the Oklahoma. “I just felt for those families,” Webb says. “It’s bad enough to lose one son, but to lose two or three in some cases… I can’t imagine the grief that they had to live with.”

The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred nine years before Carol Sowar was born, but in many ways, it shaped the course of her life. An entire side of the family was simply wiped out: no aunts, uncles nor cousins. There was a lasting sadness. Her mother, Irene Louise Trapp, grieved her older brothers’ deaths until she, herself, died in 2007.

After their deaths, the family revered Harold and William. Photos of them were preserved like relics. They were gone, no doubt. But where? Were they at the bottom of Pearl Harbor? Or in an anonymous grave?

The questions loomed for decades over Ray Emory, a Pearl Harbor survivor aboard the U.S.S. Honolulu hit the same day the Trapp brothers likely died. He spent much of his life pushing the U.S. military to identify the unknown remains. In 2003, after years of research, Emory approached the military with folders containing sailors’ personal information. Armed with service records, dental scans and other evidence, he was convinced that modern science could identify remains of at least one of the buried service members. The military agreed to investigate.

The first grave was exhumed that year and researchers were stunned to discover DNA signatures of more than 100 people in a single casket. The military made its first individual identification in 2008 and ID’d four more sailors over the next two years.

The findings showed the promise of DNA and advances in dental, anthropological and genetic evidence in identifying the lost sailors, giving hope to hundreds of families living in limbo. But the Navy was against DNA testing on the Oklahoma, not wanting to raise the expectations of gold-star families only to let them down. Over time, the innovations and reliability in DNA technology could not be ignored. In 2015, the Pentagon overruled the service and instructed the caskets to be disinterred and identified using the latest DNA technology.

The exhumation of the Oklahoma victims took place between June and November 2015 and went through analysis at the DPAA laboratories at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, and at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. The two labs, staffed by anthropologists, archaeologists and forensic odontologists, comprise the largest skeletal identification facilities in the world.

Forensic scientists cut postage stamp–size samples in bones and Tic Tac–size wedges from teeth and send them to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Dover, Del., for testing. Once extracted, the DNA is compared to reference samples from cheek swabs provided by living family members who are maternally related to the missing service member. The DPAA, which has been at work identifying remains not just from Pearl Harbor but all American wars beginning with World War II, maintains massive DNA banks. The agency uses DNA in about three-quarters of its cases.

The agency did not have all the family reference samples from the Oklahoma. Some of the service members had no living descendants or were adopted; or family members simply never submitted. The DPAA ultimately identified 361 of the 394 unknown service members aboard, which is a 92% success rate. Most of the identified sailors and Marines were buried in the Punchbowl or in their hometowns.

To identify William and Harold’s remains, DPAA researchers used mitochondrial DNA from Sowar, her brother and her two children, who all gave samples. Scientists then had to tell how each of bones that was a DNA match to the family belonged to each brother. “We were able to use dental as well as anthropological methods to individuate the brothers,” says Debra Prince Zinni, the DPAA laboratory deputy director. “We knew dentally, which skull belonged to which brother. And then the stature really came into play. Harold is several inches taller than William, so just from the length of the bones, we were able to determine which brother was which.”

When the call finally came to Sowar in November 2020, she was dumbfounded. She was sad, of course, but also relieved to have certainty about her uncles’ fates. She thought of her mother, who would never have that satisfaction, and of her grandmother, who lived out the rest of her life without her two boys. “I just cried and cried and cried from relief,” Sowar says.

After she watches her uncles laid to rest under their own headstones at the Punchbowl, Sowar feels as though she’s reached the finish line of a marathon. “I don’t know how I can explain it better than I feel… that this is where they belong,” she says. “And yes, it’s 80 years, and it took a long time to come home, but they’re home.”

Shortly after the ceremony, Sowar walks into the cemetery’s Courts of the Missing, which documents each service member who went missing-in-action fighting America’s wars throughout the Pacific. Standing in the afternoon sunlight, she scans the thousands of names chiseled into the stone walls until her eyes fall on her uncles’. There, next to each one, she places a gold rosette. The two men are now accounted for.

—With reporting by Nik Popli