The Supreme Court’s December 1 hearing on Mississippi’s fifteen-week abortion ban confirmed what everyone had already guessed: anti-abortion justices will throw abortion rights on the scrap heap when they hand down their decision next summer.

The three judges who support abortion rights were reduced to appealing to the court’s reputation. “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked early in the hearing.

Chief Justice John Roberts, perhaps the only anti-abortion justice concerned with preserving the court’s legitimacy, querulously noted that only the fifteen-week ban, not banning abortion as a whole, was before the court. The five other hard-right appointees clearly don’t care.