Conservatives in several more states are likely to be emboldened by the Friday ruling and move to either ban or severely restrict abortion in their states as well. However, in the more predominantly liberal parts of the country, Democratic lawmakers have moved to strength abortion access in anticipation of the high court’s decision.
The Supreme Court revealed on Friday that weeks of protests and fury following the leaking of its draft decision in early May had made little effect on the contents of that decision, ruling in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that abortion is not a right protected by the US Constitution. The ruling overturned a previous decision by the high court in 1973, Roe vs. Wade, which legalized the voluntary termination of a pregnancy by the pregnant person.
States Immediately Banning Abortion
The court’s decision has triggered special laws in 13 US states, passed years ago in anticipation of this moment.
The trigger laws in Louisiana, Kentucky, South Dakota, and Oklahoma immediately activated on Friday, banning abortion outright, although Oklahoma audaciously passed a total abortion ban several weeks before the court’s decision came down. In Missouri, Arkansas, Utah, and Mississippi, the state whose abortion restriction law was challenged in the Dobbs case, the trigger law will take effect as soon as the state’s attorney general certifies it, which will be within days.
Texas, Tennessee, Wyoming, North Dakota and Idaho also have trigger laws that will end abortion within 30 days of the high court overturning Roe.
In addition, with Roe removed, nine US states that banned abortion prior to the ruling but never removed the old laws from the books will now see those laws reactivate, banning abortion once more. The states are Alabama, Arizona, Michigan, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, plus four others for which the bans are superfluous because they also have trigger laws.
States Likely to Ban or Severely Restrict Abortion Soon
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based sexual and reproductive health and rights think tank, several other conservative-dominated states are likely to seize the moment and move to either ban or seriously restrict abortion in the coming weeks and months.
Those states are Florida, Indiana, Montana, and Nebraska, all of which have become well-known for pushing at the boundaries of Roe before it was overturned.
The future of abortion in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Virginia is uncertain, since none have explicit abortion protections and either have or are prone to having Republican-majority legislatures that may try to restrict abortion access.
In Kansas, voters will decide in an August referendum whether or not the right to an abortion will stay in the state’s constitution, as the state’s supreme court ruled in 2019. If they vote against it, a ban is likely soon after.
Several others also have very strict anti-abortion laws that will take effect, such as Georgia, Ohio, and South Carolina. All three states have passed laws banning abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy - a period previously protected from restriction by Roe - similar to Texas’ SB8 law passed last year, which aroused so much fury when the high court decided to let it take effect last September.
States Moving to Protect Abortion Access
On the other side of the coin, 16 US states where more liberal politics prevail have explicitly protected or strengthened the right to access abortion services within their borders, with some even adding funding to support “refugees” traveling there from states where it’s banned.
The states are concentrated mostly on the West Coast and Northeast and include Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii.
The Republican governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, has said abortion will remain legal in the state, although he recently championed the Republican-majority legislature’s 24-week abortion ban.
What About At The National Level?
The Biden administration is strongly pro-abortion, despite attempts by the Catholic Church to leverage US President Joe Biden’s Catholic faith in the other direction. That said, it has been left with few options to immediately respond to Friday’s decision by the high court, which said that legislation is the only way for abortion to become legalized nationwide.
The Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that would have codified the provisions of Roe vs. Wade into the US law code, passed the Democrat-majority House last September but failed in a May vote in the Senate, which is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats but in which Vice President Kamala Harris could cast a tie-breaking vote.
The White House has considered expanding funding for Medicaid, but the Hyde Amendment bars federal funds being spent on abortion services. Biden initially opposed the amendment, but acquiesced to its inclusion in a March spending bill because he did not want to hold up military aid for Ukraine that was also in the bill.
In the end, the Democrats really only have one answer: “To make a difference, from guns to abortion rights, we must march to that ballot box in November.”
However, across the United States on Friday afternoon, thousands were preparing to march in the streets instead, including outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, where police were preparing to meet them in riot gear.