When the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion law in the United States by a six-to-three vote on June 24, 2022, it restored legislative power to each of the country’s 50 states. The ruling, which overturned the precedent of another Supreme Court decision half a century old, the landmark Roe v. Wade (1973) left a changing patchwork picture of women’s reproductive health rights. This mapping is also a true reflection of a polarized society.
At least 25 states, almost all of which are ruled by the Republican Party, have since decided to ban or severely limit abortion rights, while other Democratic-leaning states like Colorado and California have strengthened these protections. Meanwhile, the legality of mifepristone, a drug used in about half of all abortions performed in the United States, is in question following a ruling by a Texas federal judge.
In post-Roe America, more than 25 million women ages 15 to 44 live in states that have tightened abortion standards in the 12 months since the Supreme Court — the most conservative in eight decades — according to the Associated Press Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that is also anchored in American legal history books. More than 5.5 million women live in places whose politicians have made decisions in the same restrictive direction but are being put on hold while they are supported by organizations like Planned Parenthood (PP), which runs about half of the country’s abortion clinics, be challenged in court. The PP is behind the complaint that paralyzed the enactment of a law in Utah that was pending the Supreme Court’s decision. The Utah case is just one of about 50 cases pending in court following Roe’s fall.
A pro-abortion protest in Washington, June 2022. Anna Moneymaker (Getty Images)
In the other half of the country, abortion remains legal for at least the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. In 20 states, from Kansas to Minnesota, these protections, suddenly called into question after half a century, have been consolidated into law or added to their constitutions after a ballot box vote.
Geographically, the ruling has shaped a map in which vast regions of the South and Midwest have become a “desert for women’s rights,” as defined by Isabel Guarneri of the Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan reference organization for the relationship between reproductive health and public policy.
This desert is poised to expand its silhouette to encompass most of the southeastern United States when two controversial laws that would lower abortion limits go into effect in Florida and the two Carolinas. In South Carolina there is a law with a six-week notice; It has been blocked by a judge and awaits review by a conservative state Supreme Court. In North Carolina, a regulation that prohibits layoffs after 12 weeks is to come into force on July 1.
In this desert there are oases like Illinois and Kansas, where in August a referendum protected women’s freedom of choice, but these are surrounded by states where abortion is not an option. One of the most immediate consequences of the Dobbs ruling was that it led to a brain drain, with hundreds of thousands or thousands of people having to travel to terminate their pregnancies, which meant that abortion was now also determined by geographic and economic factors.
Politically, the issue has turned out to be more complex than anti-abortion organizations have anticipated for the past 40 years. During that time, they used political and legal pressure to coerce the Supreme Court — with three justices appointed during the Donald Trump administration with the express mission of overthrowing Roe is to make a decision favorable to her fight meet.
Last November’s parliamentary elections demonstrated the political weight of abortion. Women’s reproductive health was a key voting argument to stem the “red wave” that Republicans were anticipating. President Joe Biden has highlighted the threats to reproductive health during his re-election campaign. Candidates for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election — a crowded, unfinished list conveniently headed by Trump — are showing in the early stages of the campaign that they’ve learned their lesson and generally avoided making themselves explicit about a highly controversial one to express topic.
The ambitions of Trump’s closest rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are being hurt by the fact that in April he signed into law one of the country’s most restrictive laws, setting the deadline for abortions at six weeks, except for pregnancies linked to rape or incest. This is allowed up to 15 weeks of pregnancy provided supporting documents such as a restraining order or a police report can be presented.
When Roe was tipped, polls showed that two-thirds of the US public opposed tightening abortion standards. A poll commissioned by NBC News this week found that the percentage of Americans who disapproved of the Supreme Court’s decision a year ago stands at 61%. According to a poll published Friday by the New York Times, a majority of Americans think abortion is “morally acceptable” for the first time and that the new abortion laws that went into effect this year are “too strict.”
A demonstration in Tallahassee to protest Florida’s abortion law last April. Alicia Devine (AP)
Perhaps the best example of how women’s suffrage has become one of the most contentious issues in the US for half a century comes from one of the most extreme: Alabama Congressman Tommy Tuberville blocked the promotion of about 200 senior US military officials in 2016 -Defense Regions for the Pentagon’s permissive abortion policy, which allows its staff to take a few days off to perform an abortion and guarantees reimbursement for those who have to travel. Both are pipe dreams for most low-skilled female workers in the US. In states like Texas, these financial obstacles are compounded by criminal penalties: a person who consents to an abortion faces up to five years in prison under a law passed in September 2021.
This cascade of prohibition regulations has reduced the number of abortions performed: In April 2023, 25,650 fewer abortions were performed in the United States than in the same month a year earlier, according to the monthly estimate by the #WeCount survey, which collects data from clinics across the country year before, when Roe was still in office.
The next target of the US anti-abortion movement is a ban on mifepristone, the most popular abortion drug, in combination with another pill, misoprostol. The former terminates the pregnancy; The latter empties the uterus.
In January, a change in regulations from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed these pills to be sold in retail pharmacies. Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed federal judge, temporarily suspended the former’s term in April. In practice, this decision was never put into effect. The same nine Supreme Court justices who overthrew Roe last June disagreed with a New Orleans appeals court, whose judges set restrictions on mifepristone administration while reviewing ultraconservative Kacsmaryk’s ruling.
This US Supreme Court ruling was a rare victory for pro-abortion advocates in the country, although it did not dispel the specter that these drugs would eventually be banned nationwide. The verdict that overturned Roe vs. Wade a year ago also had ramifications for the Supreme Court. The publication of the draft in May 2022 plunged the institution into an unprecedented crisis which – as the source is not yet known – is far from over. The credibility of the Supreme Court, whose members are elected for life, has also been undermined in the eyes of US citizens. According to a recent Gallup poll, nearly 60% of Americans disapprove of their ruling, believing it is biased and overly conservative. This represents an all-time high.
The text of the leaked draft Supreme Court Opinion states that the Roe precedent “was egregiously wrong from the start” because abortion is not a right under the US Constitution. In one of the concurrent opinions, Judge Clarence Thomas wrote that the court “should reconsider all previous rulings” relating to cases brought under the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects, among other things, the right to privacy. These include Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), who legalized same-sex marriage; Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which ended the ban on same-sex relationships (2003), and Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which allowed married couples to use contraceptives.
Progressive activists’ fears that the path set by the court a year ago will continue have not materialized so far. Instead, conservatives in Republican-dominated locations in at least 19 states have made strides in passing legislation restricting transgender rights. In many cases, this new crusade (there was no such law as of early 2021, but it already promises to be one of the main battlegrounds of next year’s presidential election) is being presented as a complement to restricting women’s reproductive rights.
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